Going the Distance
by Michelle
Summary: Their lives have never been simple. The sequel to Stumbling Home.
1. Prologue

_Here it is! The significantly plottier (but still occasionally pornographic) sequel to _Stumbling Home_. I'm still working out some kinks with the later chapters of the fic, but the entire thing is drafted. Look for an update every two or three days!_

_Many thanks are owed for this fic. First and foremost to the hive, eiluned, Amanda, and Bees for listening to me gripe about this since November, for reading huge chunks of it during the writing process, and for telling me when something sucked and when something was awesome._

_Secondly, to all the people who have followed me here and on tumblr because of SH, to all the people who left me reviews, and to all of the people who asked me when this thing was going to come out - I would not have gotten this far without you guys!_

_I hope this story doesn't disappoint! Happy reading, and if you've got a moment, I'd love to hear what you think!_

* * *

Natasha hated waiting.

She hated sitting around uselessly, twiddling her thumbs while events rushed on around her. She hated that itchy feeling of idleness and the accompanying feeling that she should be somewhere elsewhere.

She hated it, but waiting was all she'd been doing lately.

After she and Clint had gotten back from Asgard, they'd waited for their next assignment, waited for the team to have a purpose again. Something would come up; it was just a matter of time. At least she'd had Clint to wait around with (and with whom she'd twiddled a lot more than her thumbs), but two weeks ago, Fury had called asking for a favor.

Unfortunately, it had been a favor suited particularly to Clint's expertise and not her own; sitting around, watching and waiting was more of his thing. So even though she probably could have gone with him, could have probably gotten Fury to ask her along for the ride, too, she didn't ask because if she was going to cool her heels, she'd rather do it within walking distance of a Starbucks.

And, quite possibly, a teeny, tiny part of her (as it were) wanted some time alone to think through . . . things.

As much as she loved him, there were some parts of herself that were still a little raw and uncertain, parts of her that were still stunted, stuck in the past, in the five year old child she once was, and she needed to figure out what she wanted. And figuring out what she wanted? Well, that was going to take a significant amount of alone time, even discounting all the time it took for her to work up the courage to contemplate what amounted to the rest of her life.

All of that was well and good, but for the moment, it left her alone and bored. So, bored, in fact, that she'd contemplated signing back up with SHIELD just to have something to do with her time. At least then she'd be doing something productive with her time.

Well, that, and she could hack their system to find out what Clint was up to.

She had a good idea, of course, not least of all because of Tony's top of the line communications array. Military chatter over the radio had recently been abuzz with a series of assassinations in southern Africa. She was fairly certain she recognized Clint's hand in the work, but there had also been a coup in central America that could have also been helped along by the Hawk.

In any case, while Clint was off shooting things and saving the world, she was sitting in New York, waiting.

It was driving her nuts.

She wasn't sure what she would do without the other members of the team to keep her company. She'd forged strange kinships with the men that made up her team, and she shocked herself, moreover, to find that she didn't mind several of the people that worked for Stark. She was a solitary creature by nature and habit alike, but it was nice not to feel like the last person on Earth once in a while. With Clint gone, that feeling was stronger than ever.

Especially because of certain suspicions she'd been having, impossible as they were. But then, she was starting to get used to impossible things.

A little over three months ago, she and Clint had been injected with a drug they'd come to discover was an Asgardian fertility drug, one that had strained even their considerable libidos. She hadn't even been able to be in the same room as him without wanting to push him to the ground and have her way with him, and for her, for someone so used to being in control of herself, her body, and her hormones, it had been an adjustment.

After the effects had mostly run their course, they'd gone to Asgard to learn more about what had been done to them (and not a little bit because Clint had been giddy with excitement at the prospect). Frigga, Thor's mother intimated that the drug was more powerful than she could imagine, that it had never once failed. If she'd felt vaguely uncomfortable about the drug before, the idea that she could be . . . pregnant (God, it even gave her pause to think the word) made her feel violated.

Natasha had done her best to put all of that out of her head. The Red Room had made damn sure that none of their female operatives would ever be so inconvenient to them as to get pregnant, and she was too practical to entertain impossibilities. In all her years since then, in all the years since she'd met Clint, started sleeping with him, there had never been a cause for concern. There had never been so much as a scare. Never. Not once.

But then the drug happened, and she'd started feeling ill around strong smells, her body was unusually sore, and she hadn't had a period since . . . she couldn't even remember. In idle moment, she kept wondering just how permanent the Red Room's changes had been. She was starting to wonder just how strong the Asgardian drug was, wondered if Frigga's words had been true. She'd even started to wonder about things that she'd always assumed were never meant to be hers, stupid, inane things like red haired, blue eyed children with perfect aim and smart mouths.

She couldn't afford such thoughts, though, couldn't afford to hope for a future that wasn't meant for her. She'd always been sensitive to strong smells; it was one of the things that made her a good spy. The soreness could just be from all the working out she'd been doing, throwing herself into exercise to distract herself from the other parts of her life. And she probably had been missing her period because of the stress in her life. It wasn't as if it had never happened before.

She'd avoided finding out for certain though, was even a little scared of it because as much as the thought of having a child frightened the shit out of her, the alternative was somehow just as devastating.

She'd gone so far as to head to the corner store twice, pulling one of Clint's hats down over her hair and hiding behind her biggest sunglasses. She'd walked up and down the feminine products aisle, gingerly fingering the pale boxes for the little plastic tests, and both times she'd chickened out, had bolted from the store rather than facing her fears.

She wasn't a coward, but she didn't know how to feel about any of this, didn't know how to feel about not knowing her own body.

So she waited. Clint would be back soon, and then maybe they could figure something out.

* * *

Clint hated waiting, especially in sweltering hot backwaters where the most interesting thing to do was count the tsetse flies that danced across the lens of his scope.

He shouldn't have taken the job, wouldn't have taken it except that Natasha had convinced him, had pointed out that there were only a handful of people in the world who could make the type of shots that Fury was asking for and Clint was the only one of them playing for the home team.

He'd called Fury the next morning with his answer.

He'd still left reluctantly, lingering longer than he should have in bed, sipping his coffee more slowly than usual, dragging his fingertips over Natasha's body without hurry as if he could stave off leaving by delay alone.

He'd wanted to stick around; Natasha had been acting weird lately, quiet and evasive, and he wanted to suss out the root of it. He hated seeing her like that, hated not know what he could do to make it better, but when Nat got into moods like that, well, it was easier to wait it out.

It had been a hard thing to give her space, though. There was something terrified and hopeful in the back of her eyes when she looked at him these days, a look not dissimilar to the one he saw in the mirror each morning when he shaved. They'd gotten through a lot of shit in their time together and whatever it was, whatever was bothering her, whatever was keeping her up pacing at night, she'd tell him eventually. It just might take some time to get it out of her and into the open.

That was kind of hard to do from the other side of the planet, of course.

The worst part of it was that he hadn't even been able to talk to her since he shipped out; his unit was under strict orders not to break radio silence. They were ghosts, leaves in the wind, and no one would know where they blew until the mission was done.

He'd had too much idle time on this mission, more than he was used to. He missed Natasha fiercely, desperately, craved her like a drug (something he knew a thing or two about), and to be cut off from his supply was slowly driving him mad.

It was not comforting to imagine that she was going through the same thing back in New York. It only made it worse to recall the forlorn look she'd given him for a split second before covering it up with a grin and a kiss as she wished him a safe job.

So he watched and waited and did his job because the sooner he was finished, the sooner he could be back home, back to New York, back to Natasha.

He just fucking hated the wait.


	2. Chapter 1

****_Thanks to all of you lovely people who responded so positively to the prologue! Your kind words and follows really have made all the headache of the past few months worth it. Here's hoping this thing doesn't disappoint!_

* * *

She was restless.

Clint had been away for too long, and the last message he'd gotten out to her was just a short text, enough to let her know he'd be out of contact for a while and that no news was good news. By all rights, she should be used to that kind of thing, even now that they were only sporadically working for Fury. They worked together far less frequently as full time Avengers than they had in their SHIELD days, but the silly, childish part of her couldn't help but fixate on the fact that this was the first time they'd gone with out daily contact since things had changed between them, since they'd let themselves be in love (the silly, childish part of her interjected that being in love wasn't the only thing that had changed recently).

She still couldn't quite wrap her mind around how she'd gotten here, how she'd found somebody she could be happy with, someone who could watch her back, someone she _trusted_ enough to let him. And actually being in _love_ with him?

Ten years ago, it would have been enough to make her doubt her sanity. Hell, even five years ago she'd have laughed her ass off at the mere suggestion that she would ever be in love with her partner. In lust? Sure. Clint Barton was an attractive man; she'd known that from the start, had felt that invisible tug of attraction from the moment he tracked her down and pinned her to a wall with an arrow through her shoulder. But love? Never.

Clearly, something had changed in her. Maybe it was a side effect of growing older or stupider or maybe it was just fatigue. Nevertheless, something had softened, and she'd let him in and had discovered that she didn't really mind having someone rattling around in her heart. It was a weakness that made her feel stronger, better about herself, better about her place in the world.

Now, if he would just report in.

After her workout, she found herself on the common floor of the tower. Her feet had obviously decided to seek out company even if her brain still vehemently denied the need.

She spotted Steve by one of the huge windows overlooking the city, sitting with his elbows on his knees and his chin in his hands. He'd pulled one of the overstuffed armchairs from elsewhere in the room, and it looked like he was deep in thought.

"Hey," she said softly, trying not to startle him. He hadn't made any sign that he noticed her entering the room, and since it was second nature for her to walk without making a sound, it was very possible that he didn't realize he had company.

He didn't move when he said, "Hello, Natasha."

She took that as a sign that she could approach, even if he still seemed a bit standoffish. She'd been around him enough by now to know that talking generally shook him out of a funk. She walked over, leaned against the window in front of him.****

"You okay?" she asked, not really expecting an answer. Not a real one, anyway. ****

Steve sighed. "Yes . . . No." ****

Natasha raised her eyebrow. "Which is it?" ****

He shrugged. "Both. I mean, I'm alive, New York is more or less in one piece, and I even figured out the damned microwave this morning," he said, smiling self-deprecatingly. ****

Natasha waited. When he didn't continue, she added, "But?"****

Steve leaned forward on his elbows and let out a breath. "But I still miss it. Despite everything, I can't help wishing I was back in a world I understood better."****

Natasha smiled at that. "Did you really? Understand it, I mean? I grew up in this one, and I still don't."****

He looked over his shoulder back at her. "Well, when you put it like that . . ." He turned away again, and his head sagged. Reaching between his legs, he picked up a bottle from beside his chair, one she'd missed. He took a swig, then held out it out to her. "Drink?"

Without thinking, she reached out and took the bottle from him. She started to raise it to her lips, but then she paused, that strange feeling from earlier back in the pit of her stomach. It wasn't real, wasn't possible, but . . .

"You know what, actually, no," she said, handing it back.

"Never known you to pass up vodka," he said, looking surprised and not a little curious.

She shrugged, then changed the subject before it could go any further down that path. It wasn't that she didn't trust him enough to have that kind of conversation (he was her team leader, and if . . . _it_ were true, she'd have to tell him), but she didn't think it was fair to have it with anyone other than Clint, not yet. Not first and especially not when she wasn't absolutely certain.

She smiled, quirking her eyebrow at him. "I thought you couldn't get drunk, Rogers."

He laughed at that. "Well, it seems like something I should be doing right now, if that makes sense."

She nodded, the corner of her mouth quirking upward in appreciation. "Yes, it does."

He leaned back in the armchair, took another few drinks from the bottle. She could tell he had more to say, could see it all over his face, so she waited silently while he worked up to it.

Staring out the window, he said, "Today is my best friend's birthday. He would have been 87."****

Oh.****

Natasha had picked up a few things over the years from Clint, a modicum of patience being one of them. So she waited again. Steve didn't disappoint. ****

**"**It's not that I don't appreciate everything, it's just . . ."****

Natasha nodded. "I get it." She normally wouldn't say the next part, _hadn't_said the next part to anybody, not even Clint, but maybe Steve was the one who needed to hear it. "I was raised by the Soviet government. It was . . . unpleasant, but sometimes, I miss the structure."****

Steve leaned back in his seat, stared at the bottle in his hands. ****

**"**Yeah."

* * *

Having run out of people to bother and rooms to pace, she hit the gym again, deciding to put in a few miles because there wasn't anything better to do.

In the middle of mile five, she started regretting the cereal and coffee she'd downed in between talking with Steve and her run. A wave of nausea overtook her, hitting her square in the gut, and she slamming her hand on the bright red STOP button . She leapt from the treadmill and ran for the locker room as fast as her suddenly shaking limbs would carry her.

She lost her dinner crouched over the toilet in the first stall.

"Stop overdoing it, Nat," she muttered to herself as she splashed water on her face. She could hear Clint's voice saying the words. Well, he would be amused that he'd embedded himself so firmly in her consciousness at least.

She wiped her hands on a towel, dabbed a little at her flushed cheeks, and headed back out into the gym proper, ready to pack it in. There were some files that she should look at and a few stacks of overdue paperwork that she needed to get to. Now was as good a time as any, she supposed.

She found Steve waiting for her when she stepped back into the gym.

"Natasha," he started the moment he saw her, straightening a little. He looked better than he had earlier in the day, when she'd seen him upstairs.

"Fury has . . ." Rogers paused, looked at her a bit more closely. "Are you okay?"

She nodded, pushing aside the residual nausea by force of will alone. "Fine," she replied, then immediately changed the subject. She didn't really want to dwell on her lapses in judgment. "What about Fury?"

Steve looked like he wanted to pursue his question, but he wasn't of the Tony Stark school of (not) minding his own business, so he let her answer stand.

"Fury's called us for help, and the assignment is one that I think you would be particularly interested in."

She raised an eyebrow. It would have to be some kind of assignment for Rogers to say that. He knew what she thought about working for Fury, knew that she wouldn't unless there was no other choice. She grabbed her water bottle from the treadmill.

"Details?" she asked.

"A few months back, Fury started hearing about a sniper operating primarily in Eastern Europe," he began as they left the gym. He guided their steps toward the elevators. "The guy was making crazy shots, impossible shots . . ."

Natasha snorted. "I'd say we've all got a little experience with that kind of thing. Fury really wanted me on this one?"

He nodded. "He said it would be something that would catch your interest."

"Because of Eastern Europe?" she asked doubtfully. "Or because of Clint?"

He shrugged. "Yeah, probably both. I got the feeling that Fury was holding something back when he briefed me."

"Because he never does _that_," she chuckled. She was sure she would figure it all out, see what Fury had seen when she went over the mission parameters. "What else do we know about this guy?"

Steve pressed the button to call the car, stabbing at it with his thumb. "Just that he was doing things, taking shots that Fury said he'd only ever seen from Barton. He suspected Barton for a while."

Natasha rolled her eyes as she preceded Rogers inside, effectively hiding her reaction, but not especially caring if Steve saw. Fury's suspicious mind, while great for tactical analysis, was a major reason she and Clint had distanced themselves from SHIELD. She didn't think Fury would ever trust Clint again, no matter what he said, not after what happened with Loki in New York. Not even after he'd proven himself over and over, not even after Loki tried, and failed, for a second time.

She didn't regret their decision to leave. She might miss the steady work it offered, the regular chance to wipe out some of her debt to the world, but it was tiring to watch your back even from your employer.

"But?" she asked, sure that one was lurking.

Steve keyed in the floor for Tony's self-styled war room.

"But then the hits continued while the two of you were in Asgard."

Of course. They'd had to be a thousand light years away to remove the shadow of doubt. She bet the old war horse was still wondering.

Steve briefed her on several of the hits while they walked, and they came to their destination only to find the others already there, reviewing footage on the massive LCD display in the main room.

She was breathed a little easier when she saw the footage, having seen Clint's work often enough to know that these hits weren't him – they were just a hair too sloppy. Her curiosity, however, was piqued. She could tell that they were being carried out by someone nearly as good, almostas good, which was a terrifying thought - she'd once seen Clint shoot a surveillance camera out in the dark across a crowded plaza while half-delirious from sleep deprivation. Whoever was doing these jobs was frighteningly competent, and even were they half the marksman Clint was, there was serious cause for alarm.

She leaned in closer to get a better look, and she started to get an eerie sense that she was missing something, that there was a key point she hadn't yet received, and it gave her pause. She was on the fourth clip when she started to realize that her familiarity wasn't solely with the circumstances of the hits, but that she knew someone who worked that way, someone from another life. By the time they were watching footage of a hit carried out in Krakow, she was certain of it. She caught a glimpse of a silver in the corner of the screen, and her heart skipped a beat, stopped for a second, and it took an eon for it to restart.

"I know who this is," she said, her skin feeling gelid all over, as if someone had thrown a bucket of ice water over her head.

The others in the room turned to look at her curiously.

"You do?" asked Banner, obviously surprised.

She nodded. There really was no mistaking it.

"It's the Winter Soldier."


	3. Chapter 2

_Thanks are owed to all of you who have been so supportive so far - I appreciate your reviews, follows, and favorites so very much! I wish I had more time so that I can respond individually to them all. Every single word means so very much to me!_

_Special thanks go out this chapter to elvestinkle for letting me rope him into reading through this part at the last minute - you're the best, babe!_

* * *

She briefed the rest of the team on what she knew, what she remembered from her time with the Red Room. She was aided as she talked by Tony, who pulled up the Winter Soldier's SHIELD dossier on the main screen.

For all that SHIELD excelled at intelligence, they didn't have a lot on the sniper - a few blurry photographs, two of which she could immediately tell weren't him, and a couple of videos that weren't much better. It reminded her of nothing more than her own SHIELD file, the one from before she'd joined up, back when she was more rumor than reality.

"You said he worked for Russian intelligence," Bruce noted. "Did you work with him?"

She'd been waiting for that question, and she was honestly surprised that it hadn't come sooner. It would have been her first question; she'd want to know if there were any weaknesses to exploit.

Natasha nodded. "The Winter Soldier trained me."

The men in the room looked intrigued at that, as if they couldn't quite comprehend a time when Natasha Romanoff wasn't the deadly weapon that stood before them today.

Steve cleared his throat. "So you know how he fights?"

"Yes. I picked up a lot from him," she said, falling into the easy cadence of recitation. She could answer this without thinking too much, letting the words distract her from the queasy feeling in her stomach. "In addition to his obvious skill with weaponry, James is also proficient in advanced hand to hand combat techniques. When we last met, he was fluent in more than a dozen languages."

She paused for a long moment, debating whether or not to add the last part. Shrugging internally, she went for it.

"He's also got a synthetic arm," she said.

"A prosthesis?" Bruce asked, clearly impressed. "And he's still making those shots?"

"Must be one hell of a marksman," Rogers mused, staring at the monitor, "if he can do all that with only one good arm."

Natasha cleared her throat. "No, it's not exactly a prosthesis."

Rogers turned back to look at her. "Not exactly?"

"Well," she said. "You might call it a robotic arm."

"Excuse me, what?" Bruce slid his glasses down his nose. "Robotic?"

"Just what are we talking here? Steve Austin robot or C3PO robot?" Tony asked.

Forcing herself not to be amused at Tony's points of reference, she said, "It's mostly just enhanced strength and reduced reaction time, though some of that could just be him. James wasn't anyone's definition of slow."

"James?" Stark asked. Trust him to pick up on the one thing that didn't really matter to their assessment of the situation. "Shouldn't that be Ivan or something?"

Natasha did roll her eyes this time, though it was more out of frustration at being constantly interrupted than anything else. "He wasn't born in Russia," she said. "He was an American. Born before the war, if I remember correctly."

"Which war? The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan?" Bruce asked. "Vietnam?"

She couldn't help the bark of laughter that escaped her throat. "James was born in 1925."

They all looked taken aback by that, but it was Tony who recovered first. "So, you're telling me that this guy, this Winter Soldier of yours, he's doing black ops missions, completing hits that even Barton would be proud of, and he's what, 90 years old?"

"Yes," she said.

"I suppose you're going to tell us next that you're secretly 90, too, right?" Tony asked.

"I'm 34, Stark," she said, fighting to keep her tone even. This really wasn't helping. "But then, I wasn't one of HYDRA's science experiments." _Just the Red Room's_, she added mentally.

"HYDRA?" Steve leaned forward onto his elbows. "When was this?"

She silently thanked him for helping her change the subject. "From what he told me, he was presumed dead toward the end of the war. HYDRA found him alone and injured behind enemy lines. They . . . experimented on him." She looked at Rogers. "He was part of a program designed to repeat the success that Dr. Erskine had with you."

"Did it work?" Bruce asked.

She shrugged. "To a degree. Until I met you," she said, nodding at Rogers, "I had assumed that it was."

"But?" Steve prompted.

She shook her head. "There were some . . . _things_ about him. I dismissed them as side effects at the time, but now . . ."

"Side effects of the serum?" Tony interrupted.

She started to shake her head in disagreement, but changed her mind. "Partially, but I don't know. I guess I figured the suspended animation got to him."

"You say that so nonchalantly, Agent Romanoff," Tony drawled, but she knew that glint in his eyes; he was hooked. "The Russians have the ability to put people in suspended animation?"

She raised one eyebrow. "Is that really so surprising, given our current company?" She caught Steve smirking out of the corner of her eye. "Besides, I think it only works on enhanced humans. They try it on you? You'd die."

"What about you, Agent?" Tony asked with a touch too much curiosity for comfort.

She glared at Stark. "To answer your question, yes, the Russians have developed a working process of suspended animation," she said, avoiding his other question and pressing on. What the Red Room may or may not have done to her was not up for discussion. "James was kept under for years at a time, pulled out only when they needed him, and it messed with his brain. He'd have these lapses, do things that didn't make sense. Most of the time, he was this perfect soldier, always looking out for the advancement of the motherland. But sometimes, he would talk about things he missed, about America, and . . ."

Bruce finished her sentence. "And now you think that maybe it wasn't just the suspended animation. That they brainwashed him, and it didn't fully stick."

She nodded. "Yes. If he was American, it would make sense that they would need to brainwash him, that they would have to add something to the process that Erskine didn't."

"Because I was already loyal to my country," Steve agreed. "The Winter Soldier wasn't."

"So why even use him, then? Why not go for someone loyal?" Bruce asked.

She started to speak, but Steve cut her off. "They didn't want to waste a soldier who mattered." He said it like he knew something about that. She remembered reading Rogers' file, remembered what he'd been before the serum. Perhaps he did know at that.

She didn't say anything, but she could tell from the expressions on the faces of everyone in the room that they knew the same thing.

"I'd worked with him three times before I left," she continued, interested in breaking the uncomfortable silence just as much as anything else. "The third time was just before my last mission. He'd been out of storage for a week, training on some new guns, showing me some tricks, and all he could talk about was baseball and New York City. He . . ."

She wanted to say that James was the reason she left, that he was the one who gave her the idea in the first place, but it wouldn't be true, not entirely, anyway. He sowed the seed, maybe, but it was the cocky SHIELD agent who'd not-so-accidentally run into her Romania that really clinched it, who made her believe that she could do something else with her life. She swallowed, feeling uncharacteristically emotional.

Pushing all of that aside, she swallowed once, twice, then said, "I wouldn't be surprised if Barnes was freelancing now. Even without Clint, I wouldn't have stayed much . . ."

"What did you say?" Steve breaking in with a strange, low voice. "What did you call him?"

She blinked. "Barnes. James' last name is Barnes."

Steve had gone very pale.

"Cap?" Tony asked. "You doing okay, old man?"

Steve blinked a few times, then said, "I know him, too."

* * *

The four of them were wheels up before she knew it, headed across the Atlantic on one of Stark's planes. She'd been surprised when he suggested it; usually, he let SHIELD foot the bill, but when she saw the plane, saw it's design, she got the impression that Stark was itching to try it out, take his new design for a test run.

The plane was sleek, ultra-modern, and, most importantly, it was _fast_. Even in a Quinjet, it still took two hours to cross the Atlantic. At current speeds in the StarkJet, they were set to cut that figure in half. Color her impressed, though she wasn't about to let Stark know that. He was already smiling entirely too smugly from Steve and Bruce's reactions.

Natasha sat quietly off to one side, reviewing the files from SHIELD on her laptop. Current intelligence indicated that Barnes had been working his way through Western Europe, filling several high profile, high payout contracts. Within those parameters, there were only two jobs she could reasonably see the Winter Soldier taking – one in Rome, one in Dublin. Now if she could just figure out where to go first . . .

Her phone buzzed, drawing her out of her internal debate. She pulled the device out, not sure who would be . . .

She couldn't stop the grin that spread across her face.

_Done here. Back in 72. C._

Clint was okay.

"Good news?" Bruce asked, and she was in such a good mood that she didn't bother to wipe the smile off her face. It wasn't as though Banner didn't know practically everything about their relationship anyway.

"Clint's on his way back to the States," she said quietly, not wanting to draw more attention than necessary. Tony and Steve were arguing about something in the front seats of the plane, and even if she'd been assured that this jet "practically flew itself!", she didn't want to add more distractions to the mix

"Ah," Bruce nodded. "Wondered why you were smiling like that."

She fought a blush, turning back to her computer screen. "Am I that obvious?" she said, tapping blindly.

He snorted, chuckling under his breath in the seat beside her. "Nah," he said. "I think it's sweet."

She looked back up at that, turned to face him. "I'm not sure anyone's ever said that about me before," she said, seriously.

He shrugged, then propped his book on his chest and pushed his glasses back up his nose. "I just meant that it's nice to see that you can live like . . . this," he said, gesturing with one finger around the plane. "And still maintain a functional relationship."

She forced herself not to lash back, not to deny his words because it was Bruce and she actually liked him, and maybe a little bit because he wasn't technically _wrong_ in this case. She just hated feeling . . . sweet.

"Glad to know my sex life is a source of amusement," she said wryly.

Bruce grinned, opened his mouth to reply, but then Tony called from the front, "Oooh, Romanoff! Are we talking about your sex life? Because I'd like to hear more about your sex life. For instance, should I imagine that you . . ."

The flight couldn't end soon enough.

* * *

They touched down in Rome an hour and fifteen minutes after they left New York to Stark's vociferous delight.

"Boo yah!" he shouted once they'd taxied in, his hands in the air. "Suck it, SHIELD!" He stood, turned around to face his teammates. Waggling his eyebrows at her, he said, "You can't tell me that didn't light a little fire under ya, Agent Romanoff. Think we'll make Fury jealous?"

She snorted her amusement as she finished stowing her laptop and unhooked her seat belt. "Undoubtedly."

They were met on the tarmac by a car that took them directly to Stark's apartment in _il Centro_; one thing she would have to say for being part of the Avengers was that they traveled in style. If this were fully a SHIELD op, she'd probably be expected to hoof it to their base of operations (which would certainly not be as nice as Stark's apartment).

Once they'd settled in, she laid out the mission specs she'd worked out on the trip over quickly and efficiently for the rest of the team. Rogers had easily ceded the mission design to Natasha; infiltration and reconnaissance was her area of expertise, and he was nothing if not enthusiastic about playing to his team's strengths.

The target was a scientist set to appear at a fundraiser for AIDS awareness later that evening. Giovanni Marino spent most of his days in a secure government facility working on vaccines (and, Natasha suspected, bioweaponry that SHIELD and the Council found useful); if the Winter Soldier were going to make his move, this would be the time.

"Rogers and I will be going in. We'll secure Marino at the party, then look for Barnes," she said, nodding at Steve. "Stark, I want you and Bruce across the street on comms."

"What, is my charm too explosive for a covert mission?" Tony asked, but she could tell he was perfectly aware that he was too high-profile for this type of work.

"More like she doesn't want someone with my . . . charms in the middle of a potentially tense situation," Bruce responded smoothly.

Natasha raised her eyebrow at them both. "Trust me, Banner. I'd take your charms over Stark's any day of the week," she said, exchanging a brief smirk with the doctor. She poked through the metal case on the table, then passed out the comms units to the rest of the team.

"Once we're inside, Rogers and I will maintain radio silence unless something happens. Try to keep extraneous chatter to a minimum," she said, staring directly at Tony. "In the unlikely event that Barnes isn't on the inside, it's probable that he'll be waiting here," she said, tapping her finger against the map. "Banner, make sure you keep eyes on the exit."

She swept her eyes around the table.

"Questions?" she asked. When no one said anything, she said, "Then suit up."


	4. Chapter 3

_I owe so many thanks to all of you who have been reading and reviewing, following and favoriting - you guys have made the months of uncertainty while writing this monster worth it! I appreciate every single word you send my way. Love you all!_

_Special thanks once again to elvestinkle for reading over this chapter for me. Love you bunches!_

_As always, if you've got a moment, I'd love to hear what you think!_

* * *

Parties like this had been a second home in her life before. She'd spent more time than she could recall at events like these, playing the role of the air-headed socialite, flitting about the room while gathering information and the stares of every person in attendance, letting them get up close and personal, smiling and batting her eyelashes until she got what she wanted.

She'd done the same often enough when she came to work for SHIELD, but it had been different. After she'd defected, she had expected to receive much the same treatment, despite what Clint had told her, what he'd promised her when he held out his hand instead of putting an arrow through her heart. She'd expected to be sent out like she had before, and she hadn't begrudged anyone for it - she'd been happy just to get away from the Room. They'd shocked her, though, SHIELD had, and while she'd continued to be the bait often enough, there was never any expectation that she had to let anyone touch her unless she wanted them to. That had been . . . surprising. Good, but surprising.

And she'd had Clint to back her up.

Milling around the party now, the eye candy on Rogers' arm, she felt the lack of Clint at her side like a missing limb. It wasn't that she didn't trust her teammates, it was just that she felt better with him around, more comfortable. With Clint, she could make her move without hesitation, knowing that he would follow her lead, knowing that he would get the job done without a word passing between them. While their new team was good (better than good, really), that kind of cooperation took years to foster, years they hadn't had.

Still, she was armed to the teeth and had America's favorite super soldier next to her, and that had to count for something. Her clutch had various and sundry compact versions of items she might need, disguised neatly in makeup containers and the like. Her hair pin was a knife (a gift from Clint, actually, given to her to mark her first year with SHIELD), and she had another strapped to her thigh, along with a gun on her other hip. Her bracelets, which looked innocuous enough, were compact versions of her Widow's Bite.

Not too shabby.

She put her head back in the game, grabbing a champagne flute as a waiter passed by, and pretending to sip while she made idle small talk with Rogers. She watched him scan the room, watched him look at the faces around them, looking for Marino and Barnes.

She leaned into Steve with a fake smile and a laugh to ask, "How are you holding up with this?"

He shrugged, smiling back, though it didn't quite reach his eyes. The thin facade of politeness wouldn't hold up under close scrutiny, but with any luck, they'd have Marino tucked away safely somewhere and Barnes in custody before the two of them needed to have any extended conversations with fellow party goers.

"I'd feel a hell of a lot better if we didn't have to go through with this charade," he bit out between clenched teeth.

She reached up and rubbed his shoulder, appreciating the dense cord of muscle she found there. "Relax," she said. "People will notice."

He listened to her, or at least tried to, but he wasn't the sort for this kind of work, and she missed Clint keenly at that moment. She hoped that he was having better luck than she was, wherever he might be right now.

"You're putting an awful lot of faith in my ability to recognize him after all this time. Maybe the experiments have changed him or . . ." Rogers stiffened suddenly underneath her fingertips, and she heard him murmur, "Barnes is here."

She looked around frantically, searching for Marino. She didn't think James would make a move in a crowded room, didn't expect that he would have changed that much since she'd seen him last, but she felt exposed, naked without the target in sight, and she had to find him, had to protect him before Barnes could get him in a secluded corner . . .

She caught a glimpse of what she thought was Marino out of the corner of her eye. Leaning close to Rogers, glancing her lips across his ear as she confirmed her sighting, she whispered, "I've got eyes on Marino. Follow me."

She slipped away from Steve, knowing that he would follow her. Making her approach, she plastered a cheerful, calm smile on her face, and thrust her hand out to the mark. "Signore Marino," she said, switching effortlessly into Italian. "My name is Natasha Romanoff, and we have reason to believe your life is in danger. My partner and I are agents liaising with Interpol. We're here to protect you."

She had to give Marino credit; he only blinked in surprise once, and he recovered quickly. She'd wager that working on bioweapons for the government, any government, meant that you received some training in these sorts of things.

"How do I know I can trust you?" he asked, panic starting to seep back in, and he looked around wildly, his eyes darting this way and that, though his posture remained nonchalant.

She raised her eyebrow. "Signore, if I were sent to kill you, you would already be dead."

_Please_, she thought. _Don't put up a fight. _They needed to get out of there, fast. Once the Winter Soldier realized what was happening (if he hadn't already), he'd be on the move.

Marino stared at her hard for a long moment, sizing her up, then looked behind her, to the left at where she knew Steve was standing. "Signorina, perhaps it's stupid of me, but I believe you."

She nodded curtly. "Let's go."

They slipped out of the ballroom, Natasha leading the way and Rogers bringing up the rear with the scientist between them. She didn't lead them out the front, but instead toward the narrow stairs of the converted palace.

"Stark, fire up those rockets of yours and meet us on the roof. We're coming out with the package in tow."

Stark acknowledged her simply, and she was glad that he was capable of following orders when the need arose. She liked to think it was because he respected her, respected the members of the team.

Whatever the case, when they reached the roof, Iron Man was already there waiting.

"Romanoff, Cap," he said. "This the package?"

Rogers nodded. "Get him back to his research facility. He should be safe there. We'll rendezvous at your apartment."

Stark nodded and took off, scientist in tow.

"Banner," Rogers directed into his mic. "You see anything? Did Barnes leave the premises?"

"No, I don't . . ." Banner started. "Wait! No! He's coming out now, moving fast, heading south."

"Roger that," Natasha said, already stripping off her heels and running toward the edge of the roof. "Don't try to engage, Banner. Meet us back at Stark's." She pulled a thin rope out of her purse and unfolded a grappling hook that she set firmly into a wall.

Turning to Rogers, she said, "Coming?"

* * *

They made it down to street level in record time, abandoning the rope and hook to run in the direction Banner had indicated. Falling back on her old training, Natasha tried to imagine what decisions Barnes would make in this situation, what streets he would run down, where he would turn.

They stumbled to a halt in a deserted piazza, unsure which side street to take. Steve motioned for her to cross to the opposite side of the square, while he took off in the other direction to look for a sign of their prey.

Rogers caught sight of him before she did.

"On your six," Steve called, and she whipped around, barely dodging the fist aimed for her head. The blow would have struck home, but it shifted in its path, and instead of hitting her in the face, he struck her arm. Her gun clattered to the cobblestones, and she had no chance to look for it, already swept into the heat of a fist fight. She lashed back out, landing her first punch, but her assailant grabbed her wrist, squeezed, and she felt the frail bones there crunch disconcertingly.

She kicked, ignoring the pain that shot up her arm, delighting instead in the surprised "Oof!" let out by the man in front of her. He released her arm, and she took several quick steps backward to regroup.

Squinting in the low light, she tried to work out his face, tried to match the features in her memory with the man before her. She wasn't completely sure, couldn't be certain until she saw his face in the light, but she thought this was him, this was James.

He certainly fought like she remembered.

He launched himself back at her, and even if she hated playing all her cards at once, even if she didn't want to let her opponent in on the fact that she had back up in the form of Captain America, she grunted Rogers' name into the comm as she grappled with the man.

"Could use some backup here," she ground out, trying to get a thumb into one of the man's eyes. He pulled on her hair, hard enough that she saw stars, but she didn't wince, didn't dare to let her attention wander, to focus on anything other than the man she was fighting. Anything less than her total attention would get her killed.

She'd freed her knife when the pressure on her hair lifted, and cool air took the place of the muscled body of her attacker. Breathing hard, she saw Rogers had arrived and was now fighting and holding his own, unsurprisingly. What Steve lacked in training, he more than made up for in sheer strength, agility, and determination. It would be a close fight.

Unless, of course, she made sure that it wasn't.

Thumbing on the chargers to her Widow's Bite, she waited until she knew they were ready, then whispered into the pickup. "Put some distance between the two of you, Rogers. I've got this."

Steve didn't acknowledge her, couldn't really, but she knew he heard her when he pushed back, then took his shield in both hands and bashed it across the man's face. Barnes stumbled backward, stunned, and Natasha took her chance.

She aimed and fired, draining all of the energy reserves in one shot, but it was worth it because the man fell to the ground, slumped in on himself.

She walked over to him cautiously, stooping to pick up her gun from where it had fallen earlier. She trained the weapon on his prone form. He was probably out, but it didn't hurt to have a backup plan, just to be sure.

She nudged him with her toe, kicked him over until he was laying flat on his back. Kneeling down, with her gun still held on his face, she tilted his head until she could see his face clearly, unfettered by the shadows.

She smiled grimly. It was James, all right.

And then he surged up, grabbing her bad wrist. She screamed, unable to hold back this time. Caught unawares, he flipped her, had her on her back, pinning her legs with his and she couldn't think straight through the pain and surprise. Fuck, where was Steve?

And then he was there, right when she needed him, a blue clad arm wrapped around the Winter Soldier's throat.

"Let her go or I break your neck," Steve said, and though she had never taken him for a particularly violent man (not one who enjoyed it, anyway), she had no doubt that he would make good on the threat.

The Winter Soldier relaxed his grip on her wrist then, obviously hearing the same thing in Rogers' voice, and he let Steve pull him off her.

"James," she said when she got to her feet. "Nice seeing you again."

The Winter Soldier blinked, as if he couldn't quite grasp what he was seeing. It had been a lot of years, she knew, and she'd grown up a lot in that time. He hadn't seen her since she was 16. She wondered if he even remembered her.

She got her answer when he asked, "Natalia?" It was tentative, as if he wasn't completely sure of himself, that he didn't quite trust his own eyes. "You're alive? They told me you were killed."

No need to define who "they" were; she suspected the Red Room said as much about anyone who slipped their grip.

"Rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated," she said wryly, imagining the look on Clint's face when she told him she got to use that line. "Think you can calm down long enough for us to talk?"

He swallowed, closed his eyes, relaxed a little more. "Yeah, okay. Truce."

She didn't trust him, wasn't sure that he wouldn't just keep trying to kill her, but she wouldn't let him get in close again. She'd shoot him first, old acquaintance or not.

She nodded, meeting Steve's eyes, and he loosened his grip on James slowly. He waited, not trusting that the Winter Soldier wasn't trying to pull a fast one, that he wouldn't attack them again, but at last Steve released him and stepped away.

She saw the uncertainty in Rogers' eyes as he walked around James and took up a position beside Natasha. James started when he recognized him.

"Steve?" The Winter Soldier's eyes darted back and forth between Rogers and her, and she could see the disbelief growing, see him start to distrust reality. "How are you . . . how are you alive?" he asked incredulously.

"A glacier and some fancy technology," Steve said steadily. "Though I think I could be asking the same question."

James swallowed, looking chagrined. "I, uh, think maybe we should take this elsewhere." He glanced up at the sky, looking nervous. "My employers aren't going to take my failure too well."

He exchanged a look with Natasha, and she nodded her understanding. Whether he was still working for the Room or if he'd branched out, anyone willing to hire the Winter Soldier to do their dirty work wasn't messing around. That such an organization wouldn't take news of a failure well was the understatement of the century.

"You'll come willingly?" Steve asked.

James nodded. "Cuff me, if you want."

They did.

* * *

They warned Banner and Stark that they were returning with the Soldier, so when they entered Stark's apartment, no one was surprised to see him.

Stark, of course, was less than impressed. "This is your crazy-ass sniper ex-boyfriend, Natasha? Not what I'd expected."

She rolled her eyes as she guided James to a chair, helping Steve tie him up and cuff his arms behind his back. She didn't think it would hold him, not if he really wanted to get out, not with that metal arm of his, but it would slow him down, give her enough time to react. She knotted the ropes a little tighter.

Steve went first. "Who are you working for?"

Well, she'd never say that Rogers beat around the bush.

Barnes huffed a laugh. "I should ask you the same thing. Last I checked, you worked for the United States army, and that one," he said, motioning toward Natasha with his head, "was dead."

"We're independent contractors," Natasha said.

Barnes scoffed. "Don't give me that shit, Natalia. Do you really expect me to believe that?"

She nodded. "Yes."

"I might believe that if Iron Man weren't in the room right now. You work for SHIELD."

Natasha recognized a grasp for power when she saw it, knew that he was trying to prove how he knew more about them than they did about him. Curious to see if that were true, she decided to see if he would continue.

She raised an eyebrow condescendingly. "What makes you think that?" she asked.

"For starters," Barnes drawled, "I seem to recall a battle in New York a while back that the Tin Man and Big Blue were a major part of." His eyes glinted as he looked at Bruce. "And, if I'm not mistaken, I wouldn't like the guy in the corner very much when he gets angry."

Natasha smirked. "SHIELD had nothing to do with that operation," she said.

"And if you expect me to believe that, there's a bridge back in New York I'd like to sell you," Barnes scoffed.

"SHIELD doesn't run this outfit, Barnes," Rogers said. "I do. So how about you tell us who you're working for, since you seem to know so much about us."

James sighed, sagging backward awkwardly. "I don't expect that you'll believe this, but I'm on my own. I'm an . . . independent contractor."

"You're right; I don't," Natasha said, moving closer. "Who's pulling your strings? HYDRA? Red Room?"

"If I were still working with the Room, do you really think I would have followed you here?" he asked, staring directly at Natasha.

She didn't trust him, but he wasn't wrong. If he were still working for the Red Room, a team would have already been scrambled for retrieval, homing in on the subdermal tracker all its agents had beneath their skin. The Room probably would already be knocking down the door. They hadn't exactly subtle in their retreat.

"So, who, then?" she asked.

"Look," James said. "I just take the jobs as they come. I left the Room years ago, laid low for a long time. Got my head on straight."

She knew something about that, remembered how long it had taken her to figure out her place in the world. It had taken years for her, and she'd had Clint to help her through the worst of it. She wondered what James had resorted to in order to do the same.

"How'd you get away?" Rogers asked.

Barnes looked back and forth between the two of them, considering before he answered. "Faked my death. After you . . . died, Natalia, I started thinking. Started wondering if I could get out. So when the opportunity presented itself, I fell off the face of the Earth."

She smiled grimly. "And when you show your face again, you start taking impossible jobs?"

He grinned, and she saw some of her old friend in there, the guy who'd explained the rules of baseball to her while he showed her how to clear a jam in an AK-47. "Guy's gotta keep busy."

"Yeah, well, 'keeping busy' put you on our radar," Steve said. "Natasha figured out who you were easily enough. I wouldn't be surprised if your former employers knew you were alive."

James sighed, dropping his head back. "Shit."


	5. Chapter 4

_Many, many thanks to all the lovely people who have been following and reviewing and even just reading - you guys have really made all of this worth it. I can not express my thanks enough! _

_For those of you keeping track, this is the last non-explicit chapter for a while. Just so you know._

_Enjoy! If you have the time, I'd love to hear what you think!_

* * *

They ordered food from a shop that was inexplicably open and delivering this late; Rome shut down after a certain hour, but Natasha guessed that enough money could get your anything. Their food arrived quicker than expected (again, she blamed money), and the smells wafting from the containers had her stomach rumbling.

She was happy to see that her appetite was back, and she dug into the pasta Tony offered with gusto. The simple noodles tasted better than she thought they would, and her hunger made her realize just how little she'd been eating lately. Or, rather, just how little she'd been keeping down lately. She breathed a sigh of relief as she ate, all the while keeping a close eye on James, whom Steve was feeding in between his own bites of dinner.

It was an odd picture. She briefly entertained the notion of taking a picture, sending it to Clint. He would find it hilarious, she thought with half a grin.

She was so distracted by her thoughts that she didn't notice her stomach churning, not at first. Then Bruce moved closer to her, and she got a strong whiff of the meat and the garlic in his dish. Without warning, she felt her stomach flip, and then she couldn't even think, she just needed to throw up.

She bolted from the table, ran across the apartment to the bathroom, and she fell to her knees in front of the toilet, losing the entire contents of her stomach.

Dammit.

When she'd rinsed her mouth, she returned to find all four men watching her closely with varying degrees of concern on their faces.

"I'm fine," she said. "It's probably just a concussion from when Comrade Russia threw me down on the pavement."

She could see that Rogers, at least, knew better. He'd watched her coming out of the bathroom the other day, knew that she'd been feeling off for a while, had seen her refuse alcohol once, pretending to drink it the second time.

He was too polite to say it, but she could see the full weight of all that knowledge in his eyes. He _knew_.

Banner and Stark both looked less concerned, but they appeared to take her explanation at face value, even if Bruce looked like he wanted to examine her.

James, though, was the one who replied. "How long have you been sick?" he asked.

She narrowed her eyes at him. There was absolutely no reason for him to think . . . well, for him to think _that_, so he must be asking something else, surely.

"Why?" she asked carefully, wondering where this was headed.

He swallowed. "There have been other girls like you, girls from the Room who left."

The way he said the last word made her think of the circumstances under which she'd left, of the bullets and the blood and the pain she'd had to wade through to find her way out. She knew that the other girls who'd gotten out, whoever and wherever they were, would have gone through the same thing.

"And?" she asked, trying to keep the tremor out of her voice.

"When the Red Room changed you, they added a few things," James said, and she could see her teammates perk up at the revelation, could see them pay closer attention. She wished she was having this conversation alone. She wished Clint were here to run interference. Hell, she just wished Clint were _here_ right now.

"What did they do to me?" she asked, suddenly terrified for the first time that Frigga was wrong.

"Everything would appear fine, at first. You'd be out on your own, living your life. And then one day, their fail safe would kick in."

She swallowed. "Fail safe? What sort of fail safe?"

"Organ failure, Natalia. When you stay away from their treatments for too long . . . It's not consistent; renal failure, heart failure, cancer . . . "

"No," she said, shaking her head. "You're wrong."

"I'm not."

She leaned in close, grabbing Barnes by the front of the shirt. "You're just saying this to piss me off, rile me up. You're trying to get me to kill you."

He shook his head, and they were so close, she could feel his breath on her face when he spoke. "I'm not lying, Natalia. Not about this. We're friends, or we were. Once."

"I don't believe . . ." she began to say, but James cut her off.

"Think about it, Natalia," he said, leaning as far forward as his restraints would allow. "Really stop and think about it. The Red Room had a contingency plan for everything. You know that. Why wouldn't they have one for this? For someone like you? You cost them a hell of a lot of money, and you know too much. They were never going to let that go off into the wild."

She stared into his eyes, searching them for any sign that he was lying. She came up empty.

Pushing away from him, she shoved her way out of the room before he could say anything else to turn her world upside down, trusting Rogers and the others to keep an eye on their captive. She couldn't be in this room right now, she had to be alone, had to get out of there.

She sat down heavily on a bed in one of the bedrooms, pulling out her SHIELD laptop. She logged into the network, feeling as sick as she ever had, the entire world outside meaningless. She'd heard of the others over the years, girls she'd known and girls who'd come after her, girls who'd had enough and walked away. Among those girls, very few and far between, were the ones who truly had gotten away, the ones who weren't killed immediately or snapped up by other agencies. The ones who weren't like her.

She scrolled, leaning in close to the screen as she read, and her heart dropped lower and lower by the minute.

Dead.

All of them.

Dead.

Those girls, the other ones, the few other ones who'd escaped, they'd all died, every single one of them, even the ones who hid, who never did anything after, never fought another day after they left the Room behind. One day, they were fine. The next, they just got sick and died.

But those girls had all died quickly, soon after they left the Room, after they left the drugs. They didn't linger for years. They didn't get to have a decade on their own, making their own choices. Whatever was wrong with her was something else. She was fine.

Right?

* * *

The team went wheels up three hours later with Barnes strapped to a seat in the center of the plane and Bruce and Steve on either side of him.

Natasha took up the rear, silently watching Steve try avoid talking to his old friend, but still watching him out of the corner of his eye. No one had tried to talk to her outside of the bare minimum, at least. They'd all sensed her foul mood that morning, and they'd left her to her own devices. She was grateful for it; there hadn't been much time for sleep, and even the two hours she'd managed were fitful. She'd rolled out of bed feeling even more exhausted than when she'd started out, and the supposed rest hadn't done a thing to help her sort out what she was going to do next, what she _should_ do next.

But as much as she was glad for the time to process the new information, to come to grips with it in her mind before she had to share it with him, she really just wanted Clint to be there. She felt stupid for it, needy and childish and co-dependent, but she thought that his mere presence would make her feel better. She'd missed him before, but now his presence was a persistent ache in her side.

But since he couldn't be there, since he was still wrapping up his "super secret mission!" in whatever ass-end of the Earth he'd been sent to, she was stuck reading and rereading the texts he'd sent her, trying to connect with him even though he was miles away.

Yeah, she had it bad.

She'd thrown up again that morning, the stench of coffee thick in the apartment when she'd risen. It was alarming, she decided, not knowing what was going on inside of her, not knowing if she was dying. In the secrecy of her own mind, she wasn't afraid to admit that she'd been blindsided by Barnes' revelation, and she wasn't sure how she was going to recover. She knew she should go to the med lab the moment they touched down in New York. She should ask Bruce to examine her, see if he could determine whether her vital organs were functioning properly or if there was some indication that her kidneys were going to stop working without warning.

She just didn't know if she could face that. Not yet. Not alone.

And then . . . then, there was the other thing, the thing that she still wasn't naming, the thing that she still didn't really know how to feel about. On the one hand, she never thought that it could happen, had never entertained the notion, never dared to hope or dream or anything of the sort because she was a spy, an assassin, a trained killer. She wasn't cut out for that sort of thing. She was meant to die in some nameless corner of the world, bleeding out her sins in the dust.

Clint, though, he was different, and on quiet nights, she felt guilty, stupidly selfish for keeping him by her side when she couldn't give him what he wanted. For all the roughness of his child, for all the horror stories he'd let slip over the years, he still craved a family. Even if he'd never said it (nor would be ever), she knew that need had been one of the major reasons that he'd decided to move into Stark's tower in the first place. Clint liked to belong to things, liked being part of something that mattered, and nothing mattered more to him than family.

Somewhere deep inside, she knew that he would be over the fucking moon with joy if . . . well, just _if_, and that same part of her had stopped her from saying anything before she was certain.

She didn't want to hurt him. She couldn't stand the idea of breaking his heart. So on that morning when he'd left, when he'd lingered in the kitchen with her, when he'd brushed her hair off her forehead and asked if there was wrong, something she wanted to talk about, she'd just shook her head. She'd told him no, pretended like there was nothing wrong, and when he'd grabbed his bag, she'd let him leave without saying a word to indicate that she felt otherwise. At the time, she'd thought she was being kind, that she was buying herself the time to figure out her own heart before adding his to the mix, but now, now she wasn't so sure.

Unexpected things had happened in the interim, things like running into acquaintances from another life trying to kidnap renowned scientists in the middle of a crowded room. Now that Barnes had come back into her life and told her of the other possibility for her symptoms, well, she was even gladder that she'd not had the conversation with Clint.

She just wished that all of this wasn't so much, that she didn't have to process it all on her own.

For someone so used to having perfect control of her body, the idea that her physiology was not her own terrified her.

She tried to tell herself that there was no use worrying about it yet. That she didn't have to consider her options until she knew what was going on inside of her. Those things didn't help though, didn't quell the doubts raging inside of her.

She sighed quietly, sitting back more firmly in her seat, and she closed her eyes against the wave of nausea that overtook her when they hit a rough patch of air. They were almost back, had been in the air for just under an hour, but it had not been a smooth flight, in more ways than one. The turbulence aside, they'd all been tense, watching Barnes closely for any sign of betrayal, not quite ready to trust the man, no matter how willingly he submitted to their precautions.

Even though they were taking those precautions, Natasha didn't really think that the others had any idea of what James was capable of – if he wanted to get out of here, even now, she wouldn't put it past him. She knew that he saw the same things she did when he entered the plane. She'd watched his eyes take in the exits, the compartment where the parachutes were kept, the fire axe next to the doorway to the cockpit.

There were niggling doubts in the back of her mind, telling her to be careful, admonishing her for letting her guard down as much as she had, for worrying about her body rather than the safety of the rest of the team.

"We'll be landing in five minutes."

Stark's voice interrupted her reverie, and she shook herself. None of that mattered, not right now. She needed to focus.

Touching her stomach and swallowing forcefully, she got her head back in the game.

* * *

They hadn't decided to do with Barnes by the time they got back to the tower, not by a long shot. There were, as she saw it, really only three options.

The first, handing him over to SHIELD, was absolutely out of the question. Natasha knew that Nick Fury was a good man (she wouldn't have worked for him otherwise, not even at the cost of her life), but sometimes that goodness was buried down deep. Very deep. She didn't want to chance the life of her friend (former friend? She didn't know) to what amounted to the length of Fury's leash that week.

The second option was to keep constant guard over Barnes themselves. Stark had a state of the art holding facility built into the tower once the team had agreed to be headquartered here, and it was at least as good as SHIELD's (Tony would say "better than SHIELD's", but that was Tony for you. All the money in the world couldn't buy you the hearts and minds of hundreds of highly trained operatives. She would know).

The third option was that they could take Barnes at his word and let him have the run of the place.

It went without saying that they option three wasn't really an option at all.

Another point in the ever growing tally Rogers' favor was that she didn't need to weigh those options with him. She'd just looked at him, exchanged shrugs, and escorted Barnes directly to the detention block. Barnes had gone willingly, letting himself be guided into the cell without comment.

She'd be more suspicious, but she just didn't have the energy for it.

She waited silently on the edge of the room, watching as each of her teammates filtered out, shooting concerned glances in her direction before heading off. Tony breezed out of the room in the same theatrical manner that he'd entered it, unconcerned about the security of the facility with his AI on the job. Bruce had slipped out next, though not before securing a promise from Natasha that she would visit medical soon.

Steve was the last to go, but she hadn't really expected otherwise. She would be willing to bet that he wanted to have a private chat with Barnes, too, had been waiting for that talk a hell of a lot longer than she had, but she needed to talk to Barnes for a whole host of reasons and wasn't above using Steve's misplaced sense of chivalry against him.

He agreed quickly enough to letting her have first go, but just the same, he added, "I'll be back here in twenty minutes" as he left.

Twenty minutes would be more than enough.

"You look good, Natalia," James said with what appeared to be a sincere smile on his face. Or, at least, as sincere as he ever had been. He was trying, at least, which was a good sign.

The cynical part of her, though smaller than it used to be, screamed that it was a bad sign, a terrible sign, an indication that he was playing her, waiting for her to relax her guard before taking her out. Like a lot of things lately, her body had no patience for cynicism, so she returned his gesture, granting him a half-smile.

"It's Natasha, now."**"**Natasha," James said, testing the name out on his lips. "But the compliment stands. How have you been?"

"I don't know. Why don't you tell me?" she snorted. At least James was as unwilling to beat around the bush as she.

He shrugged a little, then sat heavily on the metal bench in his cell. "You were one of the first, you know," he said, and she wasn't sure exactly where he was going with this. She knew that, of course; it was hard to miss that she had been the only one of her group to survive the training.

"What of it?" she asked, finally.

"It's possible that whatever they did to those girls wasn't done to you," he said. "It's possible that the fail safes only came later. Maybe you got lucky."

She raised her eyebrow. "Have you ever known me to be lucky?"

"Once upon a time, you were the luckiest person I knew," he said seriously, and she could see her old friend inside of him. Barnes was either telling the truth - they could trust him, he was done with freelancing - or he was a very convincing actor. Maybe both.

"Luck had nothing to do with it," she replied, because it hadn't. After she'd come to the Room, it was not luck that kept her fed and warm when the other girls starved and froze to death. It was not luck that taught her how to use her body and every available part of her environment as a weapon. It was not luck that allowed her to learn a dozen languages in half as many years, and it sure as hell wasn't luck that she outlived the rest of the girls who were brought into the Room alongside her.

No, it was none of that, but it was instead a deadly combination of skill, determination, and intelligence. She wasn't shy about acknowledging those characteristics of hers, though neither was she possessed of enough hubris to think that those things would somehow make her immune to the opposite, to misfortune.

"I suppose not," Barnes said, and then he leaned back, rested his head against the wall of his cell. He breathed in and out a few times, as if winded before he spoke again.

"The red, white, and blue agrees with you, then?"She shrugged, unsure how much of the truth she wanted to give him. On the one hand, she certainly hadn't defected for the sake of the American flag, however symbolically. She'd done it because she'd found somebody that she wouldn't mind watching her back while she balanced her debts.

Since he could probably tell if she was lying anyway, she decided on, "There are some inherent . . . issues. But yes, it does."James chuckled at that. "Imagine that," he said, and they were both content to let the conversation die, to let the words stall out in the cool recycled air.

James was the one who broke the silence. **"**It is a different world, Natasha. I don't know if I can find my way in it."She swallowed, carefully choosing her next words. She knew what it felt like to be in his situation, to have your entire world ripped out from underneath you, to suddenly be adrift in a sea of unfamiliarity.

She'd be willing to bet that he had the worst of it, or, at least that he'd had it worse than her. She hadn't been born in a bygone age. She hadn't been abandoned by her country only to be experimented upon by an enemy nation. She hadn't been tortured and brainwashed to the extent that he had. She hadn't gone slowly crazy from the unfathomably hellish nightmare of going in and out of cold storage for the better part of a century.

Her heart ached for her friend, whatever was left of him. She wanted to believe that it was him in there, that this was the man who'd helped her as a young woman, that this was the man that gave her the idea that she could be something more, something better, that this was the man who helped nudge her in the direction of becoming the woman who she was today.

She wanted to believe, so instead of walking away, instead of not answering what sounded like a plea, instead of allowing it to fall on deaf ears, she decided to reply. She'd been changing lately, taking more chances, and something inside her told her that James needed one of those right now.

"I think . . ." she began, then tried again. "It's a different world than the one we knew years ago. No one will deny that. Things changed." She glanced over her shoulder, back toward the entrance behind her.

Going out on a limb, she said, "But there's a guy out there, a pretty damn good guy, who wants to make sure that you find your place in it."

James followed her gaze, nodding slightly. He looked back at her, then said, "Is that what it took for you? Someone to help you?"

She'd never thought about it that way, never really considered it, but it was true enough, so she nodded.

"Yes."

**"**And did it work?"

She chuckled, then leaned back against the wall. "There were a lot of times I thought I'd made the wrong call, but yes. It worked."

She was leaving a lot of things unspoken, but even after years, James still saw her more clearly than she would like.

**"**What's his name?" he asked.

She raised her eyebrow delicately. "What's to say it was a him? Maybe I was just tired of fighting for a team that would kill me if I made a mistake."

James laughed at that, a deep, surprised noise, a rumble that hadn't erupted for years. "I know you, Natasha. You work best when you've got something hanging over your head. You need the fate of the world in the balance. We were the same like that; like recognizes like." He gestured toward her face then, crooked a finger at her. "That, and you're smiling."

She hadn't even noticed, but stopped the moment he pointed it out, schooled her features back into one of careful indifference. James smirked. "So," he asked again. "What's his name?"

Natasha rolled her eyes and walked away.

* * *

She found the others sitting in the war room, talking over what they planned to do. It left her feeling a little dirty to discuss Barnes' fate without him present to speak up for himself.

"Is there something SHIELD has that we can use to determine whether or not he's still working for the Russians?" Bruce asked when she slid into a seat at the long oak table.

She shook her head. "Truth serums are only as effective as the interrogated allows them to be. Barnes knows better than to let himself be influenced by a drug. We dose him with something, he'll shut down."

"You sure?" Bruce asked, curious.

She nodded. "I would."

The conversation proceeded from there, and it had reached something of a stalemate when she felt her phone vibrate in her pocket. Reminded of the conversation she'd just had in the cells, the way that Barnes had so easily pointed out her tell, she forced herself not to smile, even though she wanted to leap from her seat and dance.

Clint was on the other end of the line.

"Excuse me," she said, and walked out of the room. The others could manage without her for a couple minutes.

"Hey," she said softly when she was alone. Even though Pepper had repeatedly assured her that Stark didn't keep the security tapes, even though nothing even approaching a sex tape staring her and Clint had ever shown up after the Loki incident, she still didn't trust that he didn't review items of interest personally before purging the data. She would keep her voice low, thank you very much.

"Hey."

His voice sounded good. Better than good, actually. Clint's weary rasp was like a blanket, and she felt like she could smother herself in it. Her brain laughed at her, scoffed at the idea that the Black Widow could be so affected by nothing more than a single word from the man she loved.

The part of her that had fallen in love with Clint, the part of her that let herself start to feel like a functional human after all the shit that she'd gone through, well, that part of her kicked the cynical part in the face.

"My flight leaves in ten minutes," he said, and she wished keenly that the opposite were true, that his plane would land in ten minutes. Better still, that he were already here, waiting for her back in their bedroom.

"Everything okay?" she asked, mindful of the hitch in his tone.

"Yeah, job's over. Just tired," he replied, his voice lending credence to his statement. "Miss you."

Her heart clenched, and she had to close her eyes to contain herself. There were a thousand things she wanted to say to him right now, a thousand worries that she wanted to pour out to him. She wanted to tell him about Frigga, about the fertility potion and her recent nausea. She wanted to tell him about Rome, about James, about the possibility that the Red Room was going to be the death of her after all. She wanted to tell him that she physically ached for his presence, that she could hardly breathe when he wasn't around.

"Miss you, too," she murmured because a phone call was not the time for those conversations. "It's been lonely without you."

He chuckled lowly, ruefully. She knew he felt the same way; he'd told her as much before.

"Keeping busy?" he asked

There were a lot of things she could say to that, and she really should tell him about what happened in Italy, about James. She felt guilty for leaving all of that out, especially when he was asking her so directly. She had to keep reminding herself that the topic of James was a face to face conversation.

"Yes," she said firmly, willing her inner turmoil to calm. "The rest of us took a job in Rome. I'll tell you all about it when you get back."

"Hold you to that," he said, and she could hear the smile in his voice. She heard other people in the background, and the noise muffled as Clint moved the phone away from his mouth to talk. When he came back, he said, "Nat, I . . ."

"Gotta go, yeah," she said. "I know."

"Okay," he said, hesitating. "Look, I, uh, you know I . . ."

Figuring out what he didn't want to say in front of the rest of the SHIELD team, she said, "Love you too, Clint. Be safe."

"Will do," he said softly, tenderly, and it was like he'd said the words back.

She slid her phone back in her pocket as she walked back into the other room, feeling a lot more relaxed now that she knew Clint was okay, that she'd see him in a few hours. Her intestines were still bound up on themselves, she still felt cranky and scared and sore all over. Yet, somehow, she felt better.

Love was strange.

"Barton on his way back?" Steve asked, looking up when she returned. She nodded.

She felt a little more in control of herself, better than she had in days. Now all she had to do was figure out how she was going to tell Clint.


	6. Chapter 5

_First of all, I am so sorry that this took me longer than expected to put up - I came down with the stomach flu in the wee hours of Saturday morning, and it's really thrown me for a loop. Thanks to all of you for putting up with the wait!_

_Thanks, as ever, to all of you lovely people for the follows and the reviews and just for reading! You guys make my day! _

_If you've got a minute, I'd love to know what you think!_

* * *

". . . I don't hink we can trust him enough to do that," Bruce was saying as she fought the urge to fidget. They'd been going through this same argument all night. They'd been like this for two hours, and they were no closer to figuring out what to do with the assassin in their custody than when they'd started.

"What are we supposed to do, then?" Steve asked, starting to sound angry, the frustration he obviously felt about the situation starting to creep into his tone. "Let him rot in that cell for the rest of his life?"

"Yes," Stark said, and even if Rogers looked like he wanted to punch him in the face, Natasha knew that Tony was just giving the answer they all were thinking. Even Rogers wasn't naïve enough to think that they had a better alternative.

That really was the heart of the matter, she thought. The team – the Avengers – they'd split off from SHIELD and the World Security Council almost the minute after they'd shipped Loki back to Asgard, maintaining only the loose affiliation with the former in order to be a legal peace keeping force. It had been one of the first things they'd agreed on; if they were going to do any good, if they were going to get anything done, they had to be independent, and Stark's money would allow them to do that.

Until now, their status as an independent force hadn't caused them trouble. Something bad happened, they went in, fixed the problem, and went home. Sometimes, they even paid for the damages. She'd laughed when she'd discovered that Stark had built a detention level into the tower because, really, who were they to detain people? What business did they have in going around and locking people up?

Somehow, the idea wasn't as funny now.

Still, what other choice did they have? Neither she nor Steve would give up their old friend to be experimented upon; she'd had Clint and then later Coulson, too, when she'd defected to SHIELD, and they'd kept her safe, kept her away from the more unpleasant of the testing facilities. She didn't think she had the same pull with Fury, not anymore, at least.

Tired and sore, she'd finally had enough when Stark said, "Well, then maybe we should just kill him and end this ridiculous conversation." He didn't mean it, not really, she knew he didn't, but dammit, she was done.

She slammed her hand on the table, drawing the stunned attention of the men in the room. She'd been quiet since she returned, hadn't had much to say except the random confirmation or denial here and there.

"We're done with this for now," she said, looking around the table and meeting the eyes of each of her teammates. "We aren't getting anywhere with this. All we've been doing for the past hour is taking pot shots at each other."

Banner was the first to nod, as she'd known he would be. "Natasha's right," he said. "We should table this discussion for the night."

Stark through his hands up in frustration, but at least he didn't argue about it. Intead, he stood up and left, barking orders at JARVIS.

"That went about as well as it could have," Rogers remarked, and she was glad to see that he was slowly learning how to deal with the most volatile member of their group. "I guess we should get some sleep."

Natasha nodded, agreed with him even though she had no intention of going to sleep; Clint would be back in a few hours, and there was no way in hell that she was going to be able to relax enough to sleep before then.

"Hey, Natasha, can I talk to you for a sec?" Bruce asked when she stood up to follow Rogers out of the room. She turned and paused, waiting, wondering what was on his mind.

With a glance toward Rogers' retreating back, he spoke, lowly enough that even someone with enhanced hearing couldn't pick up.

"You should probably get down to medical. We could go right now, if you want," he offered.

She closed her eyes briefly, more of a long blink, really, holding them shut for just long enough that she didn't explode at the guy. Bruce had the best intentions, and she knew that he only was looking out for her, but she'd just gotten that damn conversation back in Rome out of her mind. She'd just managed to relax the knot of panic in her stomach, and all she wanted to do right now was take a long, hot shower. She didn't want to get poked and prodded by Banner and whoever else had pulled the overnight shift down in medical.

"If what Barnes said is true, then there's nothing I can do about it anyway," she said tightly.

Bruce shrugged. "Maybe," he said. "But we don't know that, and the sooner we can figure out if . . ."

She waved her hand, cutting him off. "Another day won't make a difference."

"You don't know that."

She hated it when people did this to her, couldn't stand it when they decided that they knew best (even when she was pretty sure they actually did). She wasn't a lab experiment, not anymore. Banner and the rest of them would just have to wait until she was good and ready.

"It's my body, Bruce," she said, and she watched him nod, could see the moment he realized that he'd lost the argument. She felt bad though when he started to shuffle off, so she offered him a bone, let him have a little bit of insight into her psyche. "Let me talk to Clint first, okay? He'll be back soon, and I just . . . "

Bruce smiled a little sadly at her, but he held the elevator door for her.

* * *

She showered slowly, taking her time in detangling her hair, scrubbing her body twice simply because she could. She toweled off just as languidly, moving through the routine of cleaning herself up deliberately, unhurriedly in order to stave off the feeling of anticipation that was gnawing at her guts.

She was in a daze, she recognized, because otherwise she would be more worried about what this reunion would bring. She had a thousand things she needed to tell him, and she hadn't the first clue how she was going to say any of it.

Clint called again when he touched down in New York, and she had to force herself not to take one of Stark's cars to go pick him up. Logically, she knew that it would be quicker if she waited for him, that it would take less time and would be less hassle for her if she waited for him to take the subway back to the Tower.

Try telling that to her heart.

She distracted herself by getting dressed, by picking thoughtfully through her underwear drawer, pulling on old, comfortable pants and one of Clint's old shirts before grabbing a zippered sweatshirt. She knew that he liked seeing her in his clothes, knew that it brought out the caveman in him, and even if she would deny it to her last breath, she liked that she could make him feel that way. It made her feel wanted and powerful and good about herself in a way that she was not entirely comfortable sharing with the rest of the world. She'd never told him outright, but the knowing grin he aimed at her whenever she had on one of his shirts made her suspect that Clint was in on her little secret anyway

She took the stairs instead of the elevator, wanting to cut into the time she would inevitably have to kill on the entry level of the tower. Too keyed up to sit when she got there, she paced as she waited for him, worrying the nail on her thumb. She had plenty of room to move, at least. Like so many other places in the tower, the foyer was overly large, massive and kind of nauseating in the height of its ceilings. Stark thought it was impressive rather than foreboding. All she could say was that this level most definitely was not part of the Potts twelve percent.

When she finally saw Clint round the bend, when he finally came into view through the large glass windows that doubled as a wall, her heart leaped up into her throat, and she thought the stupid organ might burst its way out of her body entirely. The moment strangely reminded her of their visit to Asgard, when he'd been wounded, and she'd thought him mortally injured, only for him to appear after a hard fought battle, seemingly rising out of the mists like a phoenix.

Here they were again.

Time stopped as he walked through the door, and because she didn't care to have enough to use her typical self-control, she hurled herself across the room at him, covering the distance in a few strides and throwing herself into his outstretched arms.

It was cliché and silly and just like something out of a terrible movie and she did not give one single shit.

It was perfect.

He kissed her then, before he said anything, before she said anything; he tightened his arms around her and picked her up off the ground, pressing his mouth to hers and kissing her like she was a cool drink of water after wandering in the desert.

He tasted like home.

Eventually, they needed to breathe though, and they reluctantly pried themselves apart. She took a step back, but they didn't break their hold on each other.

"Hi," she said, smiling coyly at him.

"Hey."

His voice was rough from disuse, as if he hadn't spoken much or maybe had slept on the plane, but whatever the reason, the timbre of it hit her in the stomach and made her insides quake. He was a sight for a sore eyes, the missing piece of her puzzle, and all the other dopey cliches that she'd memorized at the behest of the Room.

"I should go away more often," he said, not without humor. "If this is the welcome back I get."

Her grin widened at his comment, and she leaned back in to press another swift buss against his lips, parting before she wanted to so that she didn't linger. She took a step away from him, let him pick up has bag before heading to the elevators. No matter how happy she was to see him, they were both still essentially private people, and reunions were not best spent in front of walls made of glass.

She let him keep his hand on her waist, though, for the whole ride up.

* * *

He hadn't realized how much he'd missed her until he'd seen her waiting for him, standing so rigidly at attention until he'd walked through the door and she'd proceeded to throw herself at him. It wasn't something he had expected, wasn't something that was at all like Natasha.

He'd really, really liked it.

It was just so fucking _good_ to see her again. He'd known he missed her, could tell from the way his breathing changed whenever he thought about her, when he'd messaged her or called her while he was away, but even that knowledge hadn't prepared him for seeing her standing there, waiting for him.

The Earth stop spinning when he saw her there, wearing one of his old shirts. He stopped breathing, stopped thinking, stopped everything in favor of just staring at the red headed vision that appeared in front of him. And then she'd been in his arms, her mouth against his, and he'd just been so caught up in the moment and so fucking _happy_.

He'd feel like an idiot if he didn't know the same sentiment lay behind the crook of her smile.

They'd been separated before, of course. Back at the beginning, when he'd first brought her in, there were months at a time when he saw neither hide nor hair of her, had only heard the occasional comment from Coulson or the intermittent rumor from another agent. Even when they worked together, after they started to really trust each other, after they'd started fucking to work out their excess adrenaline on each other – even after all of those things, they were apart for long periods of time, and if it hadn't been especially pleasant, neither had it been interminable. The longing had been manageable, something that he could placate with an extra five minutes in the shower and a few swift strokes of his hand.

It was different, though, now. _They_ were different.

They hadn't been apart much at all since the Asgard incident, though he realized that was more a matter of circumstance than intention. There just hadn't been anything on the radar that required only one half of their strike team's specific skill set.

That is, until there had been more truth than rumor to reports of a major HYDRA operation in Botswana, and the World Security Council had laid it on thick enough with Fury that the old goat had gotten over himself enough to ask Clint for help.

He'd only gone because Natasha had encouraged him, and even then, he'd done it reluctantly. He was worried about her, worried about what those long silences and thoughtful expressions had meant, and were he prone to such things, he might have worried that she was done with him, with _them_. Now that he was back, maybe he'd be able to figure out what was up with her.

It was more than just Nat's state of mind that had troubled him, though; Fury had been weird around him ever since the Manhattan incident - one might even say that the man was _uncomfortable_ around him, except that Nick Fury was never uncomfortable. Stoic and annoyed, yes, but uncomfortable?

Despite his reservations, Clint had gone, and, in all fairness, once he'd gotten there, once he'd seen the problem face to face, he'd immediately realized that there was no one better for the job.

Demand for high quality diamonds had increased in recent months, a development that even Stark had noticed and had commented on over coffee one lazy morning. Clint had thought it a joke at the time, just another instance of power mad corporations artificially controlling the market, but when he'd touched down in Orapa, he'd figured out pretty quickly that wasn't the case.

Orapa wasn't a large town, despite (or perhaps because of) its proximity to one of the world's largest diamond mines. The city was guarded 24 hours a day, and if he hadn't had a SHIELD ID and a group of locals to vouch for him, Clint doubted that he would have been able to get inside.

He'd discovered that something was amiss almost immediately; even people living under constant lock and key did not behave the way these people were behaving. Three days into his surveillance of the town, he'd figured out why.

HYDRA had taken the place over.

They taken over everything, from the armed guards who defended the perimeter to the clerk who ran the dry goods shop. HYDRA effectively owned the place, and it was creepy as hell.

He'd wanted to abort immediately, wanted to call for more backup and bug out. Fury, of course, thought Clint could handle things, and not for the first time, Clint desperately missed his old handler. Coulson would have figured out a way out of the mess with less bloodshed than ultimately had occurred.

He was drawn back to the present by Natasha, who'd tugged on his hand to draw him into the elevator.

"Sorry," he said. "Been a long flight."

Looking at him with a wry expression that said she knew he wasn't just talking about the plane ride, she gave JARVIS their floor number, then said, "Can you talk about it?"

He shrugged and leaned heavily against the wall. "Technically? Probably not."

She settled against his side, resting her head on his shoulder. "But you're going to anyway?" she asked, and he smiled tiredly.

"Yeah."

As they entered their apartment, he told her about the oppressive heat and the even more oppressive boredom. He lamented the way both had played tricks on his eyes when she took his bag and led him into the bedroom. She'd looked at him tenderly at that part, knowing just how much he relied on his eyesight, and he loved her more for the simple fact that there wasn't an ounce of pity mixed in with it.

She'd hugged him as he told her the rest, slung her arm around his shoulders and held him close while he told her about HYDRA and the hits he'd carried out, about the kids working in the open pit mine, about the bushmen he'd watched die when they'd tried to come into the town for water. It had been a clusterfuck from beginning to end, and he'd left not a minute too soon.

"You think they're going to ask you back?" she asked quietly when he was done and leaning more heavily against her.

He breathed out. "I don't know," he said. "There aren't a lot of alternatives. Honestly, I think Fury's going to ask all of us to go."

"You really think it's a job for the Avengers?"

"Is there anyone else?" he asked. "If anyone is going to take out HYDRA, it'd be Captain America and the invincible Iron Man." He wasn't bitter, not really, but sometimes it would be nice to get at least a little bit of the credit for the things he did.

She chuckled, jostling him with her shoulder. "Ah, but if it weren't for the world's greatest marksman, where would they be?"

She reached up, touched the side of his face then, and he leaned into her, pressed his lips into her palm and let the heat of her body wash over him. He'd missed her closeness, missed having her in the same room with him, and it eased his mind, his heart, his soul that she wanted to be here.

It had been weeks since anyone had touched him, since he'd had more than a handshake from another human, and while once upon a time he'd lived like that, no, _thrived_ like that, he didn't anymore. He needed her.

So when she pushed him onto his back, when she draped herself over him, he let her. He felt adrift, loose and relaxed for the first time in weeks, for the first time since he'd taken accepted Fury'd offer. She swung her leg over his hips, straddled him, and then she brought her mouth down over his.

He would be content like this, if this was all she wanted. He would be content to kiss her and hold her, to receive the same from her in kind, and he would be a happy man if he could fall asleep in her arms at this moment. Natasha had other ideas, though, better ideas, and she writhed pleasantly in his lap, grinding her center against him. His hands found her hips and he dug into them, pulling her tight against him as he thrust upward, and _oh_, he'd missed this.

Never breaking the sweet contact of her mouth, she rocked on top of him and ran her hands over his chest. She's told him about her fascination with his chest and his arms, how much she liked to touch his body, and if there were ever any doubt about whether or not that were true, it would be erased now. She moaned against him, speeding up the pace of her hips, and she was moving her hands lower, up underneath his shirt, clutching at his skin.

"I want you," he said against her mouth, thrusting up again, with more vigor this time. He moved to flip them over because he wanted to strip her bare, to taste her skin, to lick every inch of her body and remind himself of her scent, but she stopped him with the firm clench of her thighs and a shake of her head.

"No. Let me do this for you," she murmured, leaning back and peering at him through hooded eyes, and he had never been able to resist her in anything much less here, now in this venue. He nodded, ceding all control to her, laying back and letting her work.

She was a wonder to behold.

Sitting upright on him, she stripped off her (_his_) shirt, tossing it away carelessly. She reached up behind her, twisted her hands, and then miraculously her bra loosened, baring her tits. Her nipples puckered under his gaze, hardened instantly and he reached up, palmed her, echoing her throaty groan of appreciation.

"You next," she said, pulling on the fabric of his shirt. He sat up a little and helped her tug the garment off, wincing a little when the motion exacerbated one of his injuries. She noticed (of course she noticed, she always did), and she bent and pressed a kiss carefully to the unmarked skin just to the right of the bruise.

"I missed you," he said, laying his hand carefully on the top of her head, caressing her, and she took a moment to smile into his eyes before resuming her work.

Smiling wickedly, she slid down his body, dropped back down to the floor, but she wasn't done with him, wasn't leaving because she bent over, deftly undoing his belt and robbing him of his pants and boxers with a few short, powerful tugs. His cock stood up at attention, and when she stooped to pull of her own pants, he couldn't stop himself from reaching down to grasp himself, biting his lip as he took in the sight of her.

She was so fucking beautiful.

Laughing gently, she crawled back into the bed, coming to rest on one elbow beside him, and then she reached down, carefully swatting his fingers away.

"What'd I say about that?" she admonished, her voice roughened with desire. "Let me take care of you, baby."

It was the pet name as much as it was the way she grasped his cock and pumped firmly that had him bucking his hips up off the bed.

"Oh, fuck, Tash," he moaned, and she began to run her mouth all over his face and neck, kissing a line across his jaw, up to his ear, down his throat to his chest. As turned on as he was, the motion started to chafe, but she must have realized it because she tore her mouth away from his skin long enough to spit in her palm, and the added lubrication made her warm hand slide maddeningly around him.

She kept up her exploration of his body, licking and sucking on the skin of his sternum, his shoulders, his biceps, and he got the impression that she was reacquainting herself with him, relearning his parts as she moaned. His hand moved down her body, grasping at her smooth skin and finding her center of its own volition, and when parted her, she was so wet that his fingers slid inside of her without any resistance.

She moaned throatily, clenching his fingers inside of her, and the evidence that she was getting off simply by touching him only made him want her more, only made him thrust harder in her grip and speed up the motion of his hand.

He was just starting to get into it, just starting to feel the familiar, pleasant ache next to his spine when she twisted away from him. His hand slid out of her pussy as she moved lower, down over his abs and lower belly to where she was still working his cock.

She leered up at him shamelessly when she finally reached the level of his erection, and it was his only warning before she dropped down and swallowed him whole. He shouted at that, loudly, holding nothing back, and he was glad that Stark had soundproofed the levels of this place because he didn't want to have to look anyone else in the eye in the morning after a noise like that.

She swirled her tongue around the head of his dick in a way that made his eyes rolls back into his head, and then she was caressing his inner thighs, cupping and tugging gently on his balls, running her finger between the cleft of his ass, and it felt like she was tearing him apart. He could actually feel the moment when she decided to relax her throat, felt the little hum she let out when she'd made her decision. He wasn't a small man, even if he wasn't the largest, and the shock of her lips brushing the base of his cock nearly gave him a heart attack.

_Fuck_.

The noises she was making were something out his wildest dreams, liquid, sucking noises that assaulted his insides, and even though this was the greatest thing he'd ever felt, it was no longer enough. He needed to be inside of her, he needed to shove his cock inside of her tight, wet pussy, needed to fuck her until she came apart around him.

He grabbed her, threading his fingers through her hair and pulling lightly, just enough to get her attention.

She looked at him quizzically, her mouth still warm and hot and wrapped snugly around his cock, and he had to bite his cheek until he tasted blood to keep himself from going off.

"Wanna fuck your pussy," he said, and it was maybe a little cruder than he'd intended, but she laughed, sending pleasant ripples reverberating through his body before letting go of him with an audible pop.

She dropped a final kiss to his erection before climbing back up his body, her inner thighs on either side of his hips as she swayed above him. She reached down, bracing one hand low on his waist and wrapped the other around his cock to guide herself down onto him.

He brushed against her opening twice before he realized she was doing it deliberately, and when he said, "Don't tease," she smiled widely.

"Wasn't planning on it," she replied, and then she dropped down onto him, took him all the way to the hilt. She moaned as she adjusted, stilling her movements, but he didn't mind at all because it felt so good to be inside of her at last, after so long, enveloped in her heat and her wetness. His heart hurt from the intimacy of it, the way it felt to connect with her like this, and he had to touch her everywhere, had to catalog the textures of her body.

He ran his hand up her stomach, up between her breasts, resting the flat of his palm against her sternum where he could feel the race of her heart beating below his fingertips. There was a strange look in her eyes, an uneasiness that told him she was hesitating over something, and even though he wanted nothing more than to fuck her until they both fell apart, he frowned a little and asked, "What's wrong?"

She shook her head, and he swore he could see the beginnings of a tear forming in the corner of one eye. The moisture leaked then, one droplet threatening to fall, and he brushed his thumb along her eye, wiping it away before it could betray her.

"Sweetheart, tell me," he begged, sitting up and wrapping his arms around her. "What's wrong?"

She buried her face in his neck, whispering something that he couldn't quite catch.

"Nat?" he murmured, rubbing her back lightly.

Louder this time, she said, "It's nothing. I . . . I'm just really glad you're back."

He knew it was a deflection, knew that she was still hiding something because she wasn't that sentimental, no matter how much she had opened up to him, but then she swiveled her hips and clenched her muscles around his cock.

"Fuck," he hissed between clenched teeth, and since the sadness in her eyes had already reverted to pleasure, he decided not to press the issue. They would have plenty of time to talk about whatever it was that was bothering her later, and right now there were more important things to do.

They moved mindlessly together, hands skidding over sweaty skin, arms clasping tightly around the other, and he could feel the pressure building low in his stomach even as she started to tighten up around him. She started to shake and cry out, and he knew she was close, knew she was right on the edge, and when he at latched on to the sensitive skin below her ear, she did lose it, fell over that edge and shuddered and shouted as she rippled and clenched around him. Three sharp upward thrusts and he joined her, adding his voice to her own, and together it made some strangely joyful noise of reunion that was unique to them.

They collapsed backward onto the mattress, sweaty and out of breath. She pulled the blanket up around them, though, before pooling her head on his chest because even if they were overheated now, the temperature would drop before morning and, frankly, he had no intention of setting foot outside of this room before then.

The fatigue from the mission and their acrobatics finally catching up with him, he felt the siren call of sleep beckon. Just before he drifted off, he felt Natasha press a kiss to his chest where she lay, and she whispered, "I'm glad you're home."


	7. Chapter 6

_Once more, I have to thank you all so much for the follows and the favorites and the reviews - each and every one of them makes my day! _

_This chapter was originally much longer, but after a few rewrites and some hard edits, I've split the content into two chapters. Hopefully, the story is better for it. _

_If you have a moment, I'd love to hear what you think!_

* * *

The next morning came too early, but still she rolled out of bed when the first rays of light filtered in through the blinds. She was bedraggled and bone-tired, and with the wave of nausea that threatened to overwhelm her came her first coherent thought of the day - _What if I'm dying_?

Wasn't that pleasant.

Melodramatic shit like that kind of spoiled the otherwise perfect moment of waking up with Clint snuggled into her backside, his arm wrapped possessively around her waist and their legs tangled together. He'd groaned when she she snaked her way out from his embrace. He'd grappled for her in his sleep, half-mumbling something about coffee and bullets, but she was already frantic, and she'd shoved away from him, ignoring her desire to linger in favor of making it to the bathroom on time.

She sat heavily on the lid of the toilet, grateful that she hadn't, apparently, woken Clint up with the sounds of her retching. She wasn't ready for this conversation, neither of them. If she was so ill because of the thing she'd originally suspected, that would be hard enough because she wasn't sure either of them were ready for that kind of commitment, even if they were stupid in love with each other.

And the other thing? If she was dying, she wanted to spend whatever time she had left with Clint, doing the same things they always did and being as normal as possible. Pity looked bad enough on Banner's face; she couldn't take that from Clint. She just couldn't.

She put her head in her hands, wondering what she was supposed to do.

Lost in her own head, it could have been two minutes or ten when she heard Clint stir in the other room, she hurriedly brushed her teeth, then slipped into the shower just as the door opened and he walked inside.

"Hey," she said loudly over the sound of the water, and he grunted back his reply. That made her smile at least. Clint had never been a morning person, and she found it kind of adorable.

She didn't start when the shower curtain swung back because she was expecting him, and he sneaked inside the oversized stall with her, pulling her to him and crowding her underneath the hot spray.

"Stop! You smell like jet fuel!" she protested lightly, smacking the flat of her palm on his chest, but he only chuckled at her, held her a fraction more tightly and kissed the breath out of her.

"Jet fuel and you," he said, grinning against her mouth, his hands wandering down her sides.

One thing rapidly led to another; they were both naked and sleepy and finally in the same hemisphere, so when he pushed her back against the wall and pulled her leg upward, she moved willingly, eagerly hitching her leg up his side as high as it would go, and then he was sliding his cock into her and it felt like she was splitting apart at the seams.

He kissed her slowly, thoroughly, his fingers splayed out on the side of her face, and she reached between them to touch his chest, his abs, to play with his nipples while he fucked her.

The position was less athletic than perhaps they were accustomed to, but it was good and intimate and he was bottoming out inside of her with each thrust, so she wasn't complaining. It didn't take much to set her off, just a few more sharp, deep thrusts, and she was arching into him, calling out his name and shaking in his arms. He came too, biting down hard on her shoulder while he shuddered his release, quaking under her fingertips. She'd have a mark there later, but she didn't mind; she kind of liked the thought of it, that she would have his teeth marks on her body underneath her clothing, that she'd walk around for the rest of the day with no one the wiser.

He washed her hair afterward, massaging the shampoo through the locks of her hair, letting her return the favor in between playful kisses, and she was just so fucking glad that he was back.

They dressed slowly, taking their time, watching each other in unabashed admiration, and her heart ached from the way he brushed up against her, couldn't stop himself from touching her face, her neck, her hair.

She rode the wave of blissfulness all the way down to breakfast on the common floor. No one else was there, no one to see them act so out of character, so she let herself go, let herself delight in his presence and his touch. She knew he was feeling the same from the way he bumped the side of his hip into hers when he scooted by her on the way for the milk, taking an indirect path around the kitchen island just to touch her. Feeling completely and utterly loopy with hormones as she dug around in a cabinet to find breakfast, she surprised even herself with the tinkle of laughter that bubbled up out of her when he grabbed her, spun her in his arms and kissed her soundly.

Breaking away, he hugged her from behind while she poured her cereal, and he rocked their hips back and forth together, digging his fingers into the fleshy part of her hips. If they weren't in a space frequented by others, she would push him down to the linoleum and have her way with him right then. As it was she moaned appreciatively in the back of her throat and dropped a hand down to squeeze his forearms.

"Maybe I could just eat you for breakfast," he murmured in her ear, nipping lightly at the lobe. Her breath hitched, and a flood of warmth shot through her.

Her cereal forgotten, she turned in his arms again, clasped her arms behind his neck, and kissed him, drawing her lips slowly over his, her tongue darting out to taste his. She'd nearly forgotten even her reason for not fucking him here when Stark wandered in.

"Oh, hey, Barton. Glad to see you're back," he said, and either Tony was still half asleep, or the sight of the two of them joined together at the mouth just wasn't surprising anymore. They pulled apart in any event, and she took her cereal to the table, plastering on a smile she didn't feel and hoping like hell that the smell of coffee wasn't going to set her off this morning.

Clint fussed briefly with the coffee maker, giving Stark the slightly more upbeat rundown of events in Botswana, and one by one the other residents of the tower filtered into the room, Rogers with his hair still damp from the shower, Banner looking like he hadn't slept at all, and Pepper, last of all, impeccably dressed as ever. She slid into the spot next to where Tony was powering his way through a positively gargantuan bowl of oatmeal, and she took out a tablet computer to go over the days events with him.

Clint sat down next to her, placing a cup of tea by her hand, and she smiled internally at the comforting domesticity of the situation. A few years ago, this situation would not have been possible. A few years ago, she wouldn't have thought she could find something like this, or even _want _something like this.

The idea that all of this could be torn away from her was a cold, hard rock in the pit of her stomach.

". . . how Barnes is doing," Rogers was saying, and she realized that she must have been pretty far into the zone to have missed the first part of that conversation.

"Barnes?" Clint asked. "Who's Barnes?" He looked at Natasha, obviously confused.

Steve looked back and forth between the pair uncertainly, not quite meeting her eyes. "Oh, I would have thought Natasha would have filled you in already."

"Filled me in on what?" Clint asked.

She started to talk, started to explain, but Stark took over before she could get the words out. "We found another capsicle in Italy, only this one had a decidedly more . . . _Russian_ flavor."

Clint frowned. "What do you mean?"

Glaring at Stark, Natasha said, "We captured the Winter Soldier."

Clint looked taken aback at that, and she couldn't really blame him. She'd told him about her history, of course, and he knew that the Winter Soldier had been the closest thing she'd had to a friend before she defected. She couldn't really blame him for not expecting this turn of events though.

"I thought you said he was dead, Nat," he sad, leaning in close and talking quietly with her while the others resumed their conversations.

She shrugged. "I thought he was. Apparently, super soldiers are tougher than that."

"Are you sure we should have him here?" he asked, perfectly aware of the sort of person Barnes was. Clint was probably the only other person in this building, James excepted, who had the first inkling of what the Winter Soldier was capable of doing. She'd known Clint would be reluctant to hold the man here.

"I don't trust Fury with him," she said, staring down at the dregs of her tea. "I had you to watch out for me, but . . ."

Clint reached down below the edge of the table, cupping his hand over hers. "You don't need to explain, Nat. I understand." She knew he did, and she loved him a little more for not needing her to say anything else. She turned her hand over and squeezed back.

This was the moment, she knew, that she should take him aside. Every moment that passed since he had gotten back was one wherein she abused Clint's implicit trust in her. She should take him somewhere private and tell him everything. She should tell him what James had said, what happened to those other girls in Russia, that she'd been sick and worried that the same would happen to her. She should tell him about the other part, the thing that had been worrying her since before he left. She should tell him. She knew that.

Instead, some cowardice overtook her, the same cowardice that had been plaguing her for ages, the same one that let her fuck him, tell him she loved him, but neglect to give him the intel he needed to operate correctly. It was like she was watching a movie of her life, or someone very much like her, and she could do nothing to stop herself from letting the moment pass. She hated herself a little for it.

She swallowed that emotion down, hoping it wouldn't roil in her stomach, but not expecting much. She peered at Clint from over the edge of her mug, risking a glance at his face to find him smiling warmly at her. She tried not to wince.

"If you guys are done making googly eyes at each other," Stark said, standing as he interrupted her thoughts. "We've got a prisoner to interrogate.

* * *

Clint was a bit unnerved that he'd been here for hours and had no idea that Barnes, the fucking Winter Soldier was in the same building as him. He'd heard about the man from Natasha over the years, heard about the things that he'd done, and he didn't like the idea that the man was sitting on the detention level with nothing more than a glorified computer monitoring his presence.

If someone were to ask (no one would), he might also insinuate that he was just a little pissed that she hadn't told him. He understood _why_ she hadn't – there were more important things on her mind last night, but he knew better than anyone that Natasha Romanoff never did anything without forethought. She could have found the time to say something, had she wanted to. He'd already connected the dots between Barnes' presence and her episode (for lack of a better word) last night, but for the life of him, he couldn't figure out why she would cry about it. It wasn't like her. Something was up.

He followed the rest of the team quietly, not really feeling like talking until he got the whole story, not wanting to say something before he knew all the facts. He needed a bit of distance.

In fairness, Natasha was filling him in quietly as they walked, telling him of the tussle in Rome, how James had agreed to come in with them, how they hadn't exactly told anyone that they had the Winter Soldier in custody. It didn't make it any better about not being on the list of people in the know in the first place, but at least he knew now. That was more than Fury could say.

He'd been noticing odd looks on the faces of the others as Nat talked, and he wondered if there was more here than met the eye. He wouldn't be surprised to find out that not handing Barnes over had been the work of Natasha and Rogers, maybe Banner. He thought that Stark, on the other hand, wouldn't want to mess around with something so potentially dangerous staying in his tower.

His first glimpse of Barnes revealed a somewhat unassuming man (well, except for the arm), who looked, at the outside maybe 32 or 33. If what Natasha and Rogers had said was true, however, the man was an octogenarian. The man certainly didn't look like the killing machine that Natasha had described in her memories. He didn't look like someone who could take out half a dozen men at a thousand yards without breaking a sweat.

Then again, the same thing could probably be said about him.

By silent agreement, the he and the other three Avengers hung back in the anteroom, watching silently and raptly as Natasha went through a door to the cell where Barnes was. Barnes barely reacted when she entered the room, alternating between watching her closely and staring at the two-way mirror behind her.

"Didn't trust me to come alone?" Barnes asked. He didn't get up from his seat on the bench, but the pose didn't look defensive like it might in another person, just patient. Clint had only seen that in one other person – Natasha.

She ignored Barnes' question, but then it was probably rhetorical anyway.

"Why did you agree to come here?" she asked, crossing her arms. "Why did you stay here after we locked you up?"

Beside him in the anteroom, Stark snickered. "Like to see him try to bust out of a three million dollar jail cell," he muttered under his breath.

Clint wisely refrained from comment. There wasn't a prison on Earth that could hold Natasha, and if this Barnes guy were half as good, all of Stark's electronics wouldn't be worth more than some twist ties and duct tape.

Barnes had rolled his head to one side to look at Natasha.

"Maybe I wanted to fight for the home team."

"You don't have a home team. Why?"

Barnes smirked. "Aren't you going to at least try to trick me into answering your questions? C'mon, Natalia. Or have the Americans made you soft?"

She switched to Russian, and Clint wasn't sure if it was because she wanted to hide something from the rest of the team or if she was just unnerved enough that she needed to use her mother tongue. Whatever the reason, this didn't seem like the man she'd described, the one who'd taken the time to help her as a teenager, the one who'd planted the seed of rebellion in her head.

"I was giving you the courtesy of not playing around," she said.

He smirked. "Don't think that I don't appreciate it, Natalia."

"I thought we went over this. It's Natasha now."

Barnes only grinned wider, tauntingly at her. "Your boyfriend give you that name?" He did stand then, moved toward the bars. "Is he here now, watching us?"

Natasha shook her head, but she held her ground. "Why did you come here? What did you hope to accomplish?"

Barnes sighed, looking almost defeated, and he rubbed one palm across his eyes before he answered.

"I was worried about you."

Clint frowned. Worried about _her_? He'd expected any of a number of different responses, but this wasn't one of them. He could see Natasha stiffen at the comment.

"It wasn't a planned thing, but you've always made me act strange," Barnes finished.

"So you came here out of the goodness of your heart?" she asked, and Clint could feel the tension coming off of her in waves. She was hiding something, he could tell. She was trying to steer the conversation away from whatever it was that Barnes had suggested, whatever it was that made him worry about her. What the hell did the fucking Winter Soldier know about Natasha that he didn't?

"I came here because it was the best of my options. But I won't stay forever. Not like this," he said, and then he turned away from her, closed down.

Natasha stood silently for a few long moments, then swept out of the room in a huff.

"He's not going to talk to me," she said when the door slid shut behind her."Maybe you can try him, Steve."

"I don't know what I would even say," Rogers said. "I don't know the man sitting in there. Not anymore."

Natasha smiled grimly. "I, unfortunately, do. That's the Winter Soldier in there, not James Barnes."

Steve cocked his head to the side. "What do you mean?"

Gesturing at where Barnes sat hunched over, Natasha said, "We're treating him like a prisoner of war. How . . ."

"That's because he is one," Stark said.

Natasha's eyes flashed. "James came with us willingly. He didn't have to do that. He sat in that cage all night, and he's still sitting there now -"

"And he'll sit there until we figure out what to do with him." Stark crossed his arms. "He's not going anywhere."

"If you really think that, you're more arrogant than I thought," she said to Stark, then turned to Rogers. "Give him an hour or two. Maybe he'll snap himself out it."

She turned to Clint at last. "You and I need to talk."


	8. Chapter 7

_Thanks so much to all of you who've been following along and leaving me such nice comments! I appreciate them all so very much! Love you guys!_

_Caveat: this chapter is most certainly M. There's some biting in here, as well as cunnilingus and masturbation, and if that's not your thing, this is your cue to hit the back button (though, of course, I hope you won't!). _

_Thanks are owed on this chapter to the Hive for help at various stages of the game. _

_Finally, if you've got a minute, I'd love to hear what you think!_

* * *

She led Clint back to their apartment, trying to keep her cool. She was angry – at herself, at James, at Stark - and she was letting herself become too upset. Like clockwork, she felt the beginnings of a tension headache form behind her eyes. She pinched the bridge of her nose.

Clint didn't speak on the way back to their apartment, but every time she looked at him, she could see the hurt lurking in his eyes. Despite her fears, she'd never wanted that, never wanted to hurt him. He was the one good thing in her life, and she should have told him sooner. She should have told him before he left. Hell, she should have told him not to leave in the first place.

God, she'd fucked this up.

They sat in their living room, side by side on the couch, not touching, just staring at the carpet beneath their feet. Clint was still waiting for her to be ready to speak. He was good at waiting.

She took a breath. This was the moment. She had to tell him. No way around it.

_Out with it, Natasha_, she told herself.

"I might be dying."

The words fell flat in the still apartment. It sounded so simple when she put it out in the open like that. Too simple, too straightforward, too easy. How could it be true?

Clint was a statue beside her, and she found that she couldn't stop the words from pouring forth, an unending stream of babble.

"James told me that the Red Room built fail safes into us. When we go off the drugs, our bodies shut down. There were other girls like me, others who got away, and they're all dead. All of them." She swallowed down her rising gorge, ducked her head, lowering her voice even more. "I've been sick, lately, Clint. I've been throwing up and I've been weak, and I don't feel like myself. I'm unbalanced and . . ."

He put a hand on her shoulder.

"Nat."

The word was choked, strangled like he couldn't believe what he was hearing. He sounded scared. That, more than anything, made it all hit home for her. If he was scared . . .

She turned to him, feeling the heat rise behind her eyes.

"Clint."

Her voice sounded scared, too.

"Have you . . . is it . . ." he stammered, trying to find the words. She wasn't sure there were any, not for this. "Could it be something else?"

"Like what? I'm _pregnant_?"

It was the first time she'd said the word out loud in reference to herself, and it was so far outside of the realm of possibility that she wanted to laugh. She couldn't believe how stupid she'd been those few weeks, wondering if she and Clint had created a new life together. She couldn't believe she was idiotic enough to believe Frigga. She'd actually let herself hope for the future. She'd started to dream of tiny children with Clint's smile and her eyes.

Look what those hopes had gotten her. Of course she wasn't pregnant. When had life ever given her the better of two options?

"You and I both know that's impossible," she said.

"The flu, then?" he asked, softly, hopefully, ghosting his fingers over her hair.

"I don't know," she said quietly, whispering and feeling guiltier than ever that she'd kept this from him. She rubbed her palm across her face. "Bruce wants me to go see him."

He frowned. "You haven't?"

She shook her head. "I . . . didn't want to go alone."

"You wouldn't have been, not here. You know that Bruce . . ."

She cut him off, "I didn't want to go without you."

His face crumpled, and he pulled her into his chest. When he pressed his lips to the top of her head, she lost it. The heat in her eyes grew tenfold, spilled over and out of her, and she was crying, huge, wracking sobs, unexpectedly deep emotion coming from some unknown part of her, somewhere she'd never known she had. She'd been ready for death since she was ten years old, why was she suddenly so terrified now?

Clint held her through it, rubbed her back, and fuck it all, but the whispered platitudes made her feel better, just a little.

When her tears dried up, she was still shaking, curled in Clint's lap. She felt helpless, weak, confused – all emotions that she wasn't used to, and she felt so goddamn grateful that he was here and that she trusted him to hold her through this, not to judge her or feel sorry for her or . . . it was enough that he was _here. _

Her face still pressed into his neck, she reached up to touch his face. "I don't want to go yet."

She felt him nod, felt the rumble of his assent.

"Soon, though?" he asked, though it was more of a statement than a question.

"Yeah."

* * *

Later, when she could breathe, they went for a walk, long and winding through the city streets, long enough that they could pretend to be other people, normal people with regular jobs and regular lives and regular concerns. Not people who were genetically modified by secret government agencies and on the cusp of . . .

_Stop it, _she thought. _That's not us. Not right now. _

He took her to the park ("I know you love the trees this time of year.") and held her hand by the river ("Kinda jealous that you got to go to Rome while I was stuck on a roof in Botswana during a heatwave.").

She took him to a cafe and made him drink tea ("Can't I have coffee?") and eat scones ("I will grudgingly admit that perhaps your tea selection compliments this blueberry scone. But like, note the duress.") and do the crossword puzzle with her ("A five letter word for ladies man . . . C-L-I-N-T").

She found herself falling into the rhythm of the day easily, slipping into her role as seamlessly as she did when she went undercover, when she pretended to be someone else in order to trick them. It wasn't something that she necessarily liked, per se, but it was something she was good at, and she did nothing if not play to her strengths. Here and now, playing this role with Clint, she felt warm and safe wrapped in the shroud of anonymity, like she could breathe again, like she didn't have to worry about anything because he was there with her, sharing her secret.

It felt like it always felt - the two of them against the world.

* * *

Their day started to wind down after window shopping and people watching, and when they got back to the tower, he hovered briefly over the button for their floor before pressing the one for the roof. He kissed her there atop the tower, slowly and sweetly as the sun set over the city.

"Take me to bed," she whispered against his mouth and what could he do but comply?

He led her downstairs, her hand in his, and time slowed around them, thickened. He didn't turn the lights on in their apartment, just walked back to the bedroom, tugging her along after him and pulling her into his arms.

He kissed her again, and it felt like it had just now, a few floors up, and he couldn't help but feel morose, utterly devastated by the idea that this one thing, the only good thing he'd ever had to call his own was going to be ripped away from him. He ran his hands over her face, the precious curve of her cheeks, the swell of her lips, memorizing her features (as if he somehow hadn't already? He knew her like the back of his hand).

She cuffed him lightly on the side of the head. "Stop it," she murmured, her voice annoyed, but he could see the trepidation lurking behind her eyes.

He told himself to stop it; she was here right now with him, not anywhere else, and if there really was something wrong with her, there wasn't anything they could do about it right now. He wanted to give her the normal day that she obviously needed. He wanted to help her hold onto her view of reality for however long she could, and rationally, he understood that he couldn't treat her like glass. Rationality, however, had very little to do with what he was currently feeling.

He tugged her closer to him, pulled her body flush against his until he could feel every line of her, every curve pressed against him from chest to hip.

"I . . .," he said, but he didn't even know what he wanted to say, didn't know what he could possibly tell her that she didn't already know, so he showed her instead, working his way across her chin, along her jaw, down her throat with his lips and teeth.

She sighed into the air, and he dropped his hands to her ass, feeling the hitch in her breathing against his tongue. "I want you in me," she said simply.

He hardened instantly at the husky tone of her voice, and he felt himself strain at his jeans. All he could think about was getting naked with her, pushing inside of her, feeling her wet heat pulse around him. His mind skipped ahead a few scenes, and he imagined touching her, fucking her, making her come.

He growled, and despite his gut reaction to be slow and gentle with her, their recent separation coupled with the griping fear of uncertainty, and the sheer weight of the knowledge crowded everything out but his basest instincts. He wanted to be inside of her, wanted to fuck her and remind himself that they were both alive, wanted to pretend for just a little longer, too.

He picked her up, relishing the way she molded herself to him without hesitation, how she wrapped her legs tightly around his waist and let him carry her across the room to their bed. They tumbled together onto the bed when they got there, collapsing in a heap of limbs, tugging at each others clothing.

"Clint," she moaned, and for a moment he thought she had something else to say, but then she repeated it, over and over, clutching at his shoulders, raking her fingernails through his hair, and maybe it was all she needed to say.

He couldn't keep his hands still in the face of her onslaught. He couldn't stop himself from touching her everywhere, running his hands along her collarbone and dragging them down her sternum. He palmed her breasts through the thin fabric of her shirt, groaning when he felt her nipples pebble beneath his fingertips.

He pressed his mouth against the inner curve of her neck, sucking lightly on the skin there as his right hand skimmed lower on her body, lightly over her belly to the waistband of her jeans.

"Please," she whimpered, and whether the plea was directed at him or a nameless deity he didn't know or care; he just scrabbled to undo the button on her pants, a task made more difficult because he couldn't stop licking and sucking on the skin of her throat. He slid his hand inside her pants, not caring to draw this out, unable to wait any longer to feel her wetness. He cupped her through her panties, her heat burning into his palm, and when he reflexively bit down on the skin between his teeth, she arched up against him, letting out a throaty groan that hit him right in the groin.

"Fuck, baby," he said because he couldn't remember a time when he'd needed her more.

But first things first.

He broke away from her, grinning at the way she tried to cling to him, tried ineffectually to keep him against her, but when he started to pull on her jeans, comprehension dawned, and she moved to help him strip her out of the curve hugging fabric.

He resisted the urge to treat her any differently than he had the hundreds of other times they'd done this. He wasn't ready for her to be gone, he wasn't even ready to admit it as a possibility, and he was sure that she would kick his ass if he acted any differently around her.

He threw her pants aside impatiently, then dropped to his knees at the side of the bed. Grabbing hold of her hips, he dragged her toward his face. Her eyes darkened with arousal, and she wiggled her hips enticingly as she helped him along, helped him pull her toward the edge of the bed until he could smell her arousal, so strong he could taste it.

He felt his mouth water as he rubbed his face against her inner thighs, grinning as she cursed and squirmed against the roughness of his stubble.

"You smell so fucking good," he said with a chuckle. Her hands were back in his hair then, and she pushed on him, encouraging him to move closer to the apex of her thighs. Unable to resist (how could he disappoint her?), he shifted again and brought his mouth down against her center. His tongue darted out almost of its own volition, and he lapped at her, tasting her pussy through the fabric of her panties.

She grabbed his ears as he tongue fucked her through her underwear, and he loved the way he could make her lose control, how he could make her go from cool and aloof to hot and panting in a matter of minutes. He dropped one hand down to his painfully hard cock as he mouthed her, unable to stop himself from undoing his own jeans to grasp himself.

She was a moaning mess before him, so fucking hot, so fucking perfect, and he loved every fucking thing about her. He pumped himself in time with the thrusts of his tongue, but it wasn't enough; he needed more, needed to taste her cunt bare against his mouth, so he used his free hand to tug her panties aside.

He ran his tongue along the length of her bared slit, feeling her quiver against him. He drew his lips around the hardened nub of her clit, and he sucked on her, all the while pumping his cock harder as the deep, warm ache in the pit of his stomach expanded. When he felt her come, when she spasmed and groaned and clasped her thighs so tightly around his head he thought he might suffocate, he couldn't stop himself from going over the edge, too. He erupted artlessly into his palm, his come spurting upward through his fingers.

Natasha was the first to recover, releasing the grip of her thighs and pulling him up onto the bed while he was still trying to remember his name. She kissed him, pressing her open mouth against his, licking the taste of herself from his tongue, purring her appreciation.

"I see you were a little busy," she said, grinning at him, and he was so boneless from his orgasm that he just smiled back at her, too happy to give a single fuck that he probably looked like an idiot. He basked in the moment, sucking all the happiness up and locking it down somewhere deep inside of him. This was a perfect moment.

And then she slid down the bed.

Face to face with his crotch, she smacked him lightly to lift his hips, pulling his jeans and underwear down in one smooth motion. She leaned in, lifting his cock in her hand, and carefully, gingerly, she licked him clean. He didn't think he still had it in him, figured his recent stamina had been an effect of the Asgardian drug they'd been dosed with, but he found himself growing hard again at her touch, at the sight and the feel of her mouth wrapped around his cock.

She smiled at his erection, a wicked leer that he would never tire of seeing.

"So it's going to be like that, is it?" she asked, straightening and tugging her shirt off over her head.

"Jesus Christ, Natasha," he said, sitting up and pulling her into his lap to grind up against her. His hands slid up her back, and he unhooked her bra in one practiced motion, pulling it away to latch onto one puckered nipple. She clutched tightly at his shoulders, her nails gouging his skin. He knew she was leaving a mark, but for the life of him it just made him harder, made him want her more.

"Take off your fucking shirt, Barton," she ordered breathlessly. "I need to see you."

He let her tit fall out of his mouth with a rueful smile, and he leaned back to strip off his shirt, growing hot under her gaze. She ran her hands over his chest and abs, obviously just as fascinated by his body as he was by hers, and dammit, he could never possibly get enough of her, no matter how much time they had together.

He shook his head to pull himself out of those kinds of thoughts because they didn't have a place here in their bed, didn't have a place between them when they were clinging to each other in the night. He dropped his hands to her hips, pressed his cock against her and watched her squirm. He didn't know what possessed him then, but suddenly he needed to mark her as she'd marked him, needed to see the evidence of his encounter writ on her skin. He reached up behind her, grabbed her hair and tugged her head back, dropping his face to the hollow of her throat.

She moaned against him when he bit her lightly there, and he knew then that he wasn't alone in the need to mark and be marked, knew that she wanted it just as badly. He shifted his mouth to the curve her neck, the skin still reddened from his earlier attentions, and then he sucked on her, pulling the skin between his teeth, worrying her flesh with his mouth.

He pulled back from her to survey his handiwork, and his cock twitched at the sight of his bite marks standing out so red and clear next to the older ones on her pale skin, his teeth marks from the day before. Releasing his grip on her hair, he pressed his lips gently against the marks, lapped at them. She grabbed his face then, turned him until he was looking at her. She brought her lips down over his, kissing him so exquisitely slowly, so completely fucking chastely that his heart swelled.

Fucking hell, he loved her. He cursed himself for not having done anything about it sooner, for having waited until a fucking alien pumped him full of some stupid goddamn sex drug to admit that he loved her and wanted to be with her every moment for the rest of his life.

A part of him stilled at the thought, even as her hands kept up their gentle torture and he writhed beneath them. He wasn't the sort of person for marriage, and, for that matter, neither was she, past experiences in both of their lives being what they were. For the first time, though, he thought he understood what made people go through with it, why his mother had married his father, why his teammates and colleagues over the years had left the field behind.

He knew that it was unlikely that the two of them would ever do that, would ever stand before a judge with witnesses or anything like that, and if he were being honest, he really didn't want that anyway. All he wanted was her, next to him, with him for whatever time they had left.

Loathe to waste that time, he pushed her off him, onto her back so he could pull her panties off, and then he was sinking down into her, drowning himself in her heat.

He grunted when he bottomed out inside of her, feeling his balls rest against the curve of her ass. Her head rolled back against his arm, and she fluttered delicately around him, the first stirrings of her release. He thrust slowly at first, watching the expressions on her face change with keen interest, loving the way that each movement of his was reflected in the scrunch of her eyes, the minute wrinkle of her forehead. He wanted to draw this out forever.

He lost his patience, though, when she slipped her legs around his waist, when she dug her heels into the backs of his thighs and rolled her hips.

"Fuck me harder, baby," she panted into his ear. "Make me come on that big cock of yours."

He pounded into her, losing all semblance of control at the way she matched him move for move, just like she always had, like she always would. They were partners here as much as they were partners in the field, and even if he wasn't sure what he had done to deserve someone like her, he sure as shit wasn't going to complain about it, not when it led to situations like this.

He felt himself tighten up, felt the familiar coiling at the base of his spine, and he reached between their bodies to press his thumb against her clit.

"Oh, _fuck_ yes!" she shouted, and then she was coming, pulsing around him in warm, tight waves, and he couldn't hold himself back any longer, couldn't stop himself from going over the edge with her, whiting out at the edges and joining his voice with hers.

He kissed her slowly afterward, drawing her lower lip between his teeth.

"I love you," she said, and even though he'd heard it half a dozen times today, he didn't think he would ever tire of hearing it, not from her, not knowing how much she meant it. Battling the wave of emotion that accompanied her confession, he rolled off of her, dropped to his side. At last he pulled her against him, cradled her in the crook of his arm.

"Love you, too, sweetheart," he replied.


	9. Chapter 8

_Here we are at the halfway point! This chapter wraps up the significant parts of the plot for the first half of the fic, though the events will obviously have further repercussions as we continue along. Thanks to everyone for sticking with me thus far! I hope you're enjoying reading this half as much as I have writing it!_

_Many thanks to everyone for reading and following and reviewing and generally being amazing - thank you so much for staying with me! _

_As always, if you've got a moment, I'd love to hear what you think!_

* * *

He found her hunched over the toilet when he woke up, the sound of her gagging presaging the sight of her sweaty and pale faced in the morning light.

"Nat, are you okay?" he asked stupidly, rushing to squat at her side.

He pressed the back of his hand to her forehead to see if she was feverish, worried that she might be sicker than they'd thought. She never got sick, and he wasn't used to the sight of her like this. The image of Natasha wan and weak in front of him terrified him to his core, and it made her words yesterday hit home, made the idea real when before it was merely abstraction. It had been easy to pretend that she was fine when she was laughing with him, walking through the city and making fun of fashion, but seeing her soaked in sweat was making him panic. She wasn't warm though, just clammy, so he brushed her hair out of her face, then reached for the hand towel that hung above the toilet.

She took the towel gratefully, wiping the corners of her mouth, and he felt a pang of worry in his stomach. She was never like this, and whatever had her throwing up was certain to be serious.

Christ, he couldn't lose her.

She sagged against him, letting him close the lid and flush.

At length she said, "Will you go with me to see Bruce?"

He closed him eyes against the fresh wave of terror that washed through him, pressed his lips against the top of her head.

"Yeah, of course."

Whatever this was, they'd see it through together.

* * *

She leaned against Clint heavily as they made their way to Bruce's lab, and she felt guilty to see the expression on his face. She should have told him sooner; she'd had any number of opportunities. She could have told him when he first got back. She could have told him when he called before he stepped on the plane. Hell, she could have told him that she'd been feeling sick before he even left in the first place.

She could have, she should have, but she didn't. She loved him, she trusted him, she did, she did, she _did, _damn it all, but she was still hiding herself from him. After all he'd done for her, after all they'd been through, the moment that the shit hit the fan, she tried to push him away.

Old habits die hard.

She recognized that she'd never had the conscious intent of hiding things from him, that she'd wanted to tell him from the moment that Frigga spoke to her, from the moment the words left James' mouth.

She was scared, and she hated it.

As much as she had wanted to tell him, as much as it had occupied her every idle thought and as much as she wanted to blurt it all out, her worries, her suspicions – she couldn't find the words. She was too afraid of what would happen when she did, afraid of what he would say if it was . . . what she thought, and equally afraid of what would happen if it wasn't.

For his part, Clint was quiet beside her as they walked. He clearly had no idea what to think, not any more than she did.

She felt sick.

She held onto him tighter, let him guide her into the medical lab, let him hold her close and sit with her as they waited for Bruce to finish up with whatever project he was working on.

When at last Bruce came over to them, he took one look at Natasha and ordered a blood test, drawing three tubes of her blood with the honed grace of a field medic.

They were silent as they waited for the test results, and she wanted to curl up inside of him, hide from the world, and forget about superheroes and secret government agencies and fail safes. She wanted to be normal, wanted yesterday afternoon to have been her reality. She wanted to be a regular woman with a regular boyfriend, a woman who worked a regular job and didn't have to think about this kind of shit. Fuck saving the world, she was tired and she just wanted some fucking normalcy.

She didn't even notice that her hands were shaking until Clint put his own hand on top of hers.

"It'll be okay," Clint said quietly. He was sitting next to her on the examination table, his leg pressed against her. "Whatever happens, it'll be okay."

"Is that what you know?" she asked him. He flipped her hand over and traced idle patterns on her palm.

"Yeah. C'mon, we've been though a hell of a lot worse than a little bit of nausea in the morning . . ." he trailed off, blinking. She could see the moment that the thought occurred to him, the moment that he realized what he was saying. Frowning, he started, "Nat, you don't think that . . ."

Bruce chose that moment to come back into the room, walking briskly. Clint schooled his features back to careful neutrality and took his seat on the other side of the small room, but she could see the question in the back of his eyes; she knew him too well not to see the turmoil raging underneath his surface.

"Sorry to have kept you waiting. All the state of the art equipment in the world still doesn't make up for user error," he said wryly. "We got a couple of new techs in the lab . . . "

She was grateful for the mindless prattle that Bruce spouted as he poked and prodded at her, taking her blood pressure, looking at her ears and eyes, peering down her throat. He checked her for feet and ankles, explaining that one of the signs of kidney failure was swelling in those areas, but he said it in such a matter of fact way that it didn't even seem like he was talking about her, that he was just telling her about someone else who might be experiencing the problem.

He listened to her heart and lungs next, telling her all about the new lab tech, a pretty red headed girl from somewhere in Eastern Europe ("Well, she speaks Russian, at any rate."), and her uncanny ability to predict the outcome of the test trials she was conducting in one of the labs.

"You'd like her," Bruce said, now feeling her lymph nodes for signs of swelling.

Natasha smiled and made a noncommittal noise, meeting Clint's smirk over Bruce's shoulder.

Bruce took a step back and made a few notes on a chart, obviously finished with the physical exam. When he didn't say anything, she asked, "So what's the prognosis, doc?"

Banner flipped back through several sheets of paper, chewing thoughtfully on his lip. "You know, I'm not seeing the kinds of things I'd expect if your organs were failing, Natasha."

Her heart leaped a little. "Does that mean . . .?"

Bruce shook his head. "Well, I want to run some more tests to be sure, but with the symptoms you've described, it doesn't sound like anything more serious than a case of the flu."

She saw Clint sag with relief across the room, but she knew they weren't out of the woods yet. Just because there were no outward signs of the Room's fail safes didn't mean that her blood work wouldn't reveal a more serious condition. She knew better than to get her hopes up.

"It's been a couple weeks, though," she said, guiltily avoiding Clint's gaze. "I've been sick for a while . . ."

Bruce shrugged. "We live pretty stressful lives," he said. "Sometimes that means colds linger for a while. That's why I ordered the blood work."

"When can you run it?" she asked.

"I've got Maximoff running the tests right now. You can wait for the results, if you've got twenty minutes," Bruce said, placing the clipboard down on the counter and leaning against it. "She's running all the usual tests just to be sure. I'm going to take a throat swab and run a flu test, too, if that's okay?"

Natasha nodded.

"Good. Should we be running a pregnancy test while we're at it?" he asked, his eyes flicking back and forth between her and Clint. ****

Natasha didn't answer, didn't know what to say. If Bruce was right, if she wasn't dying, then maybe the other thing _was_ true after all. Maybe Frigga hadn't been wrong. Maybe she was tired and shaky and nauseated all the time because she was . . . She stopped herself from thinking the word. ****

"Natasha can't have children," Clint said when she didn't speak up, and he was calm and matter of fact about it, and so fucking sweet she felt tears pricking at the backs of her eyes. She knew that he was still curious, remembering the way he'd started to wonder the same thing himself. And he was right – she couldn't have children, Asgardian magic or no; she would have said the same thing, should have said the same thing, except that she rather felt like she as going to cry, feeling whipped back and forth between two disparate emotions. ****

Bruce frowned. "Well, then I guess we can proceed . . ."****

"Yes," Natasha said, cutting Bruce off. Both men turned to stare at her. She swallowed and fought the urge to fidget. ****

"Yes?" Clint asked, his voice small. ****

"You could be pregnant?" Bruce asked, either not picking up on the subtext or choosing to ignore it. ****

She swallowed again, trying to consume the lump in her throat, but it didn't help. "Yes, I could be pregnant. The drug we were dosed with . . ." she trailed off, shifted so she was looking at Bruce rather than Clint. She didn't know if she could stand looking into his eyes right now, didn't know what she would find there. "The drug wasn't an aphrodisiac."****

Bruce gestured at her, "What was it then?" ****

Clint was sitting stone still in his chair, hadn't moved since she started speaking, but she continued because really, what else could she do? ****

"A fertility drug," she said. ****

"Anyone happen to mention how effective of a fertility drug it is?" Bruce asked. ****

"Frigga told me that it never failed."

Bruce nodded. He turned, grabbing a long swab. "Well," he said, and she opened her mouth to let him take his sample. "I'll run this, and I'll let Maximoff know to add . . . that other task. Be right back," he said, then stepped out of the room. ****

The moment Bruce was out of earshot, Clint leaned in close, keeping his voice low. "A fertility potion?" he asked, and she could hear the confusion he was fighting to keep out of his voice.

"I didn't think it was possible," she said defensively. "I didn't say anything because I thought she was wrong. And then James said . . ."

Banner interrupted them again, this time bearing a small plastic cup.

"Hate to do this to you," he said. "But it'll be quicker if we do it this way. I'll need you to fill this up. Bathroom's two doors down on the right."

She grabbed the cup and retreated before Clint could say anything else.

* * *

He watched Natasha's back as she disappeared out of the room to go pee in a cup.

So they could find out if she was pregnant.

Natasha. _Pregnant._

With his baby.

He thought he might throw up.

He looked up to see Bruce with a funny expression on his face, caught halfway between sympathy and wistfulness.

"I take it you had no idea," he said calmly.

Clint breathed out heavily, his hands braced on his knees. "What gave it away?" he asked.

Bruce chuckled. "I've seen people less shell shocked who were fleeing a war zone."

Clint wiped his face with the palm of his hand, rubbed the back of his neck in the same motion. "Yeah, there's that," he replied.

Banner picked up the charts he'd been looking at, heading for the door. "You look like you could use a minute. I'll just wait for Natasha outside."

Clint nodded his thanks, then leaned his head back against the wall behind him.

Natasha.

Pregnant.

With his baby.

Holy shit.

He hadn't been expecting that to be the result of today's visit; it was safe to say that he'd been blindsided by the revelation. He knew he shouldn't put so much stock in it so quickly and without any concrete proof, but the thought was so tantalizing, so very tempting to indulge in. If she really wasn't dying, if she really was okay . . .

Christ, he might be somebody's father.

He never realized before this moment how much he'd wanted that. Sure, he'd watched his share of happy families in cities across the world, feeling more than a little jealous at the sight of the fathers carrying around their tiny children, feeding them ice cream and laughing. He even knew that those images weren't the sum total of what being a father meant, that he was romanticizing the job. He didn't have that kind of childhood, neither had Nat, for that matter, but he wanted so badly to experience it, wanted to be able to give that to someone when he couldn't have it for himself.

He opened his eyes at the sound of a quiet cough from the doorway. Natasha was standing there, looking guilty and pale.

"Hey," she said. "Bruce is running the . . . the test right now." It looked like she was bracing herself for whatever he might throw her way.

Oh man, did she think he was _angry_ with her?

He stood immediately, crossing the room in two strides, and he tugged her into his arms, tucking her head under his chin.

"I'm so sorry I wasn't here," he said, breathing in the scent of her shampoo.

She shook her head. "It's not your fault," she murmured back. She clutched at the fabric of his shirt as they swayed back and forth for several long minutes.

She was the one to pull away, swiping at the suspicious moisture in her eyes.

"I should have told you," she said, staring down at the floor. "I'm sorry I . . ."

"You don't have to explain yourself, sweetheart," he said, touching a finger under her chin. She didn't need to explain, not to him. He got it, got _her_, and he knew Natasha well enough to know that she wouldn't have been comfortable enough to ponder the possibility in her own mind much less discuss it out loud with someone else, even him.

She sighed, took a step away from him, and she leaned against the examination table. He stayed where he was, not wanting to crowd her.

"So what if . . ." she said, swallowing hard. "What if I'm not dying?" Her word choice didn't escape his notice.

He didn't answer her, not wanting to say the wrong thing. He knew what he wanted, knew what his gut was telling him – if she was pregnant, then he wanted this baby. He didn't, however, want anything that she didn't want, and if she didn't want this child . . . Well, suffice it to say, he didn't want to pressure her into anything she wasn't comfortable with.

"I think," he started carefully. "I think that we should wait until Bruce tells us something more conclusive."

It was the best answer he had. Until they knew more, until they knew whether or not she was pregnant, there was no sense in getting their hopes up. By mutual, but tacit agreement, they decided to wait in silence.

As it turned out, they didn't have to wait long.

* * *

They walked back from medical without saying a sound, without even looking at each other. She was in shock. It was one thing to expect something, one thing to acknowledge that something might be true under certain circumstances.

It was, however, quite another thing to have a remote possibility confirmed.

She finally looked at Clint in the elevator, peering at him out of the corner of her eye, wondering what the stunned expression on his face meant. She'd seen that very expression on the faces of a hundred men over the years; it was the expression of a man who'd been caught entirely unawares. She wondered what was running through his head. She wondered if his thoughts were any clearer than hers.

He didn't react when they reached their floor; he was so zoned out that she half-expected him to miss their floor, to keep standing on the elevator after the doors slid back shut.

He followed her into the apartment.

He still hadn't said anything, still moved with sniper's grace as he tailed her into the kitchen, so thoroughly speechless that she wouldn't know that he was there at all except that she was hyper aware of him, had always been, and there was nothing he'd ever been able to do to hide his presence from her, not even in the earliest days of their partnership.

He leaned up against the counter beside her as she filled the electric kettle and went through the ingrained habit of making making tea, grabbing a mug and a spoon, letting the motions soothe her when nothing else would.

She was rooting through her boxes of tea when he spoke, a rough half-broken noise that cut straight to her core.

"Can you even drink that?" he asked, and she fought the urge to laugh. Of course that would be the first thing he thought to say.

She pulled out a sachet of green tea and plopped it into her mug before she tried to reply.

"I . . ." she hesitated. There had never been a reason for her to think about this sort of thing except in the vaguest terms. She settled on, "You know, I don't know? Bruce didn't say anything, though . . . "

He sighed, and she could hear the bevy of emotions roiling through him, the nervousness, the fear, the tinge of elation that colored it all – she felt the same way.

"This is why you've been acting weird lately, isn't it?" he asked quietly. "Because you're . . ." He trailed off, and she got the impression that he was just as frightened of the word as she was, that naming it would give it power, would make it true.

She nodded, glancing at him, searching his features for some clue as to how he felt about this . . . situation.

"I'm sorry you found out like that," she said. "About what Frigga told me. I just didn't . . ."

"Know what to say?" he asked. He shuffled a few steps closer, turning to face her properly.

She nodded. "I didn't see a point in bringing up something that couldn't be true," she said, fiddling with the tag on her tea bag. "I didn't want to get your hopes up."

She said the last part softly. She'd never said anything to let on that she was in on that particular secret of Clint's, and now that she'd voiced it, she was afraid she was wrong, dead wrong, no matter how deeply she knew the truth of it in her bones.

"That's . . ." he started, then let out a shaky breath, a noise that sounded suspiciously like half a laugh. "I understand that," he said, reaching out with his left hand to cover hers where they were latched white knuckled around her mug. She stared down at their entwined digits for a long moment, focusing on the roughness of his calluses against the back of her hand, his darker skin standing out in harsh contrast to her paleness.

He squeezed gently, as if he were waiting her out, and it was that touch, the earnest affection behind it that let her dare to look up, to meet his eyes and hope.

"You do?" she asked, and a strange, frightening prickling feeling rasped at the backs of her eyes.

His own eyes were shining pools of light when he nodded at her. "Yeah, Nat. I get that you wouldn't want to say anything. I just . . . How is this even possible?"

He exhaled again, more slowly this time, as if he were catching his breath. He shifted his grip on her hands so that he was holding her wrist, then he peeled each of her fingers from the mug one by one until her palm was cupped warmly in his own.

"What do you want to do?" he asked, and she could tell that he was just as scared, just as uncertain about all of this as she was.

She shook her head, turned her face downward. She hadn't thought this was possible, not really, not until Bruce told them, and so she had never thought it through. She never dreamed that something like this would happen to her, not even when Frigga all but told her that it was unavoidable. Natasha was too practical for that, too pragmatic.

"I don't know?" she said, her statement coming out like a question, and she felt like a broken record, a cheap piece of vinyl, skipping back on itself. "I hadn't thought about it. I mean, fuck, Clint. I thought I was _dying _right up until . . ."

He put one finger under her chin, prodded her up until she was looking at him again. "You aren't, though."

She nodded fighting the heat that threatened to overtake her face. She would not cry.

He knew her too well, saw exactly what she was feeling without her having to say a word, and he cussed roughly, hissingly, then tugged her against him. His hands were warm on her back, and he cradled her to his chest.

The prickling heat overwhelmed her then, and she found herself crying in earnest. This was beginning to be something of a habit, one that she would hate more if she weren't reasonably certain that it was because of her hormones.

She sobbed into his chest, a gross, unpretty sound that was foreign to her, sobs wracking her body and her breath hitching in her throat. She dampened the front of his shirt, ruined it with her tears, clutching at the fabric as he rubbed her back in an attempt to comfort her.

"Shit, sweetheart," he murmured into her hair, and she should be pissed off because she hated those pet names she really did, but the way he said it set her off again, harder because she fucking loved him and hated keeping shit from him and she didn't know what the fuck she was supposed to do in a situation like this.

The water on her kettle chose that moment to click off, ready to be poured, and she used the audible reminder that there was more to the world than the two of them to recoup her senses. She pushed away from him, not forcibly but firmly, swiping at her eyes and sniffling.

"Sorry," she apologized, hating herself for the crack in her voice and for not having a better handle on her emotions. "Fuck, Clint, I don't know what's wrong with me."

It sounded stupid even to her, even as she said it, and Clint snorted, obviously in on the strange joke that was her life. He pushed past her to pour the freshly boiled water into her mug.

"You're pregnant," he said simply, and there was something in the way he said it that made her ache inside, a mixture of fear and hope that she didn't know how to interpret. Maybe it was the way he said it, but she rather thought it was _him_ saying it, that it was the sheer fact that Clint was acknowledging it that made her feel that way. For the first time, she started to believe that there was a life growing inside of her even if she couldn't feel it yet; she started to believe that she and Clint had created something together.

"Yeah," she said. "I'm pregnant."

She tested the word out for herself, rolling it around her mouth, feeling the syllables slip over her tongue. It did not taste as bitter as she thought it might. She turned around to lean on the counter beside him.

"What should we do?"

He chuckled and put his arm around her shoulder, drawing her close into his side and pressing his lips against her hair. "I think that's supposed to be my line."

She dropped her head to his shoulder. "This . . . It's yours, too," she said in a small voice, unsure why she was still so nervous.

He threaded his fingers through her hair, massaging her scalp lightly. "I want whatever you want. I'll do whatever you want me to do."

She nudged him with her hip, fighting the urge to smile. He always said shit like that, sweet shit that made her love him more. Asshole.

"You're allowed to have an opinion, you know," she said, starting to get the feeling that they were dancing around the same thing, that both of them wanted to say something, but neither wanted to be the one to say it, to be the one who committed.

Story of their lives.

They'd been through a lot in the past couple of months, but even after admitting that they were in love with each other, even after they'd figured all of the day-to-day relationship shit out, they still were a little gun shy.

So she went for it.

"I want this," she said as loud as she dared, uncertain of the unwavering truth of that statement until it danced out into the open. She shocked herself with how strongly she felt it, how much she wanted this life, this baby, her child. _Their_ child. "With you. I want to do this with you."

He wrapped himself around her at that, hugging her so close that she could scarcely breathe, but it was a good feeling, one that she wanted to roll around in.

"Me, too," he gasped, and his voice was gruff, breaking, and she thought she heard the beginnings of tears in it, but he hadn't mentioned hers, so she afforded him the same courtesy.

They held each other like that for a long time, silent and curled up in the quiet joy that was slowly growing between them, enveloping them, changing them.

"Are we even sure that you . . . that your body can handle it?" he asked at last, shifting back from her but not breaking contact, cradling her face between his big hands. He searched her eyes. "I always thought that . . . I mean, I remember you telling me that the Red Room . . ."

He wasn't wrong. Her former handlers had changed her; she was supposed to be sterile. She had never needed to worry about anything like this. But, well, here they were.

"I don't know," she said. "I never thought to ask if I could . . ."

"Have a baby?" he finished for her, smiling with his eyes and breathing hard.

"Yeah," she said, feeling a grin cross her face. "Every doctor I've ever seen has told me that I was sterile, but now . . . I don't understand how this is possible."

He shook his head, still smiling at her, the obvious joy radiating from him lighting up even the darkest corners of her mind. She'd never seen him so happy, so delighted, so perfectly content. It looked good on him.

"Yeah, well, you know what?" he asked. "I don't care about the how or the why. I don't want to think about it right now. I just . . ."

He dropped his hands to her waist, a look of disbelief and awe writ all over his features. There was a softness in him that she'd never seen, shining out of every pore of his body, a bright, gleaming excitement that she was bathing in. She felt caught up in it, in him and this moment.

"I fucking love you so much," he said.

She fell against him then, pressed her mouth against his, smoothed her tongue over every inch of his lips, tasting him thoroughly. Her heart felt like it was beating through her chest, and surely he could feel it through her body, could tell she was excited, delirious, insane because of him.

"I love you, too," she rasped against his mouth, and just as suddenly as she'd needed to kiss him, she needed to press her entire body against him, needed to be naked with him, feel him move inside of her. She wasn't dying. She was _alive_, goddammit. Better than alive, actually.

"I want you," she keened, clutching at him, tearing at him, unable to get close enough, and he hoisted her into his arms, her legs automatically twining around his waist.

"God, yes," he groaned, and she felt his reaction to her, felt him impossibly hard between her thighs. He carried her blindly through the apartment, tumbled her into the bed, and hunkered over her. She felt small for once, tiny and needy and so very completely loved, and the whole thing was kind of overwhelming. She never wanted to wake up from this dream, never wanted anything else except for this, except for him, and oh, fuck, how was this her life?

He peeled her clothing away from her body piece by piece, taking his time as he stripped her out of her things, stoking the fires that resided in the pit of her stomach. She felt languid, unhurried for once, and warm, and that warmth turned blazing when he pulled his shirt off over his head and dropped his jeans to the ground.

He slid into her slowly, filling her up to the brim, stretching her until it felt like she would tear in half, the feeling in her body playing a counterpoint to the emotions rolling through her heart. She no longer knew or cared where one of them ended and the other began and maybe it didn't matter because they were as close as any two people could be. He kissed her once more, open-mouthed and hot, kissed her over and over, his lips never leaving her body as they rocked to completion.

When it was over, when she could breathe normally again, he continued to kiss her, to cover her skin with the smooth brush of his lips. He worked his way down, and for a moment she thought he might go down on her, and she wouldn't mind that, not at all, but then he stopped, paused at her midsection, and pressed his face into her still flat belly, kissing the softness there. He laid his head down at last, turned his ear against her as if listening for a still inaudible heartbeat, but smiling anyway. He curled himself around her, and she held his head lightly between her palms.

She was confused, yes, uncertain and scared and uneasy. There were still plenty of things that could go wrong, still plenty of things they needed to discuss, but in that moment, she felt like everything was going to be okay.


	10. Chapter 9

_Many thanks, as ever, to all you lovely people here - I appreciate each and every one of your reviews and comments and favorites and follows so very, very much! Thank you!_

_Some sleepy sex in this part, and then the plot for the second half of this thing get properly underway. I hope you're enjoying this half as much as I did in writing it! If you've a minute, I"d love to hear what you think!_

* * *

She didn't know what woke her up at first.

It wasn't yet dawn (and they'd drawn the blinds anyway), their phones were off, and she didn't need to use the bathroom. Maybe she'd heard a noise; it wasn't uncommon for Tony to blow something up in the middle of the night. She peered over her shoulder at Clint, to see if he was awake, too, but since he was still out cold, it probably wasn't Tony.

Clint's fingers dug reflexively into her hip when she shifted, and it was at that moment she realized what had roused her - he was hard as a rock, and when she moved her hips, he pressed his erection more tightly against her, sliding between her bare thighs.

Oh, _fuck_ that was nice.

She could tell from the rhythm of his breathing that he was still asleep, that he was unconsciously seeking her warmth. They had a lot to do in the morning, a lot of shit to deal with and, by all rights, she should be prying him off of her, moving away and going back to sleep, but the insistent movements he was making just served to turn her on, to make her wet and needy and breathless, and she was just groggy enough that she sank into him instead of moving away.

His hands were on her belly, holding her in place as he moved against her. Moaning low in her throat, she grabbed his hand and pushed deeper into his embrace. His breathing changed, and she could tell that he had woken up, at least a little. She felt him adjust behind her, and his cock teased at her entrance, sliding up and down along her slit. She dropped her hand between her legs to stroke her clit.

"I was dreaming about you," he breathed against her ear, and she couldn't remember a time when she'd wanted him more than this. He stopped his teasing immediately at her responding moan, slid right into her wetness with a satisfied grunt, and damn it all, but she was already close, could already feel herself tightening up around him. His right hand skimmed up her belly to fondle her breasts, and she arched into his touch, whispered words of encouragement as he fucked her.

"I love being in you," he said lowly in her ear, and the growl of his sleep roughened voice sent a shock through her system, one that rippled all the way to her toes. "You're so fucking hot."

She shouldn't be so turned on by the words; she'd heard them all before, but here and now, with this man, her partner, the father of the child growing inside of her, all it made her do was gasp for air and move her hips more insistently. He couldn't possibly be deep enough inside of her, couldn't possibly be hard enough, couldn't make her feel enough, and the hand between her legs sped up, touching her clit quicker and harder.

He must have been feeling the same desperation that she felt because the next thing he rasped was, "I need you on top of me."

She was all too eager to comply, twisting out of his embrace and forcing him with one sure hand onto his back. She could just make out his features in the low light, could make out the open mouth that accompanied the gasping noises he was making, and she thought she might come from the way he panted her name alone.

She straddled him, and his hands rose to her hips, stroked the skin there. He moved one hand between them, grabbing his cock at the base, and together, they steered him back toward her pussy. Slowly, carefully, as if this were something important or special (it was), he pushed the head of his cock into her. He stopped moving then, let her take over, and she'd never appreciated more his ability to read her mood because at this moment all she wanted to do was fuck him senseless, to take him, to ravish him, to make him come so hard his brain shorted out.

She sank onto his length with as much restraint as she could, slowing herself down to a crawl even though she wanted to sprint, even though she wanted to drop her entire weight on him and feel him hit the deepest part of her. She was rewarded by the choked noise he made as she slid down his cock, by the way his hands flew up to her breasts to play with her painfully sensitive nipples.

When her ass was finally resting on his thighs, she said, "I love the way you feel inside of me," and she felt him twitch as he writhed beneath her. His grip shifted when she rolled her hips, and she arched her back, her hands falling onto his knees for support. She raised herself up off him, almost to the point that he slid out of her, but then she dropped back down, taking him fully in one solid stroke, a vivid contrast between her earlier motions.

He was reduced to a litany of her name and affirmations, crying out to a deity she knew he didn't believe in, cursing anything and everything that she did. She felt powerful, in control, and there were few times in her life when she'd ever felt surer about anything than the decision to have a child with this man.

Shockingly, that thought only increased her desires, only made her wetter, only sped up her actions as she moved over him. She pitched forward, bracing one hand on the pillow next to his head, the other over his racing heart, and she claimed his mouth with hers. His tongue darted out against her lips, begging her for the entrance, and he searched her mouth wildly.

The ache low in her belly started to grow. She could feel the warmth and the tightness spread along the length of her spine, through her hips and thighs, right down to the tips of her toes. She was close, so very close, and then his sure fingers found her clit.

"I'm going to come," she managed, breaking away from the slick heat of his mouth only for a moment. She felt his answering grin, felt the way his hand sped up between their bodies, the way he added another finger to tease her as he fucked her. He shifted on the bed, drew his knees up and placed his feet flat on the mattress. Despite their positions, it felt like she'd given up all control to him, but instead of minding or resenting it, she let herself go, let herself enjoy the moment.

His thrusts grew ever more erratic as he pushed into her, and she knew he was close, too, could already tell that this was going to be explosive, that she might die from the pleasure of this release.

He whispered, "I love you," against her mouth, and it was all over for her. She shouted and rippled against him as she came, and she'd always thought it a terrible cliché, but she saw stars behind her eyelids as she bucked artlessly against him. For his part, he bit her lip, moaning through his own orgasm. Time stretched out between them, pleasure bouncing back and forth between them endlessly, and she could scarcely believe how lucky she was to have this life.

When it was over, when she sagged against his chest, his softening cock still buried inside of her, he stroked the side of her belly, kissed her slowly, nipping her lips and her tongue. Her heart swelled with a depth of emotion she did not fully recognize in herself.

"Love you, too," she said, and his fingers tightened against her sides.

* * *

She didn't wake up completely until she was already halfway to the bathroom, her body long since used to sprinting the steps between her bed and the toilet.

It made the whole situation feel strangely real to have Clint there with her when she straightened up. He flushed the toilet and handed her a cup of water.

"Seems like you've got that down to an art," he said wryly.

She shrugged. "I've been throwing up a lot."

He pulled her into his arms, tucked her under his chin, and she let him rock her in their bathroom. It felt pretty damn good.

"You still want to do this?" he asked quietly, like he wasn't sure he'd heard her right the night before.

She held him tighter and pressed her lips against his chest. "Yeah," she said. "As long as you are." She leaned back and looked at him. "Are _you _sure?"

He grinned at her. "Hell, yes. I'm great at babies."

She rolled her eyes and swatted him. "In that case, Hawkass, I'm going to let you change all the diapers."

It was a sign of how serious he was about wanting this that he didn't even protest.

* * *

He was feeling fairly loopy on their way down to breakfast.

Well, lunch, actually, but who was checking?

He'd woken up with a sore face, and he kind of thought it had something to do with the way he couldn't stop smiling .The fact of the matter was that from the moment that they found out that she wasn't dying, from the second the words left Bruce's mouth, he'd been over the damn moon. Just for Natasha to be okay was enough, was more than enough, but this, _this_ was something else.

He held her hand on the way down to the common area, pulling her into every available alcove to press his hand to her belly and kiss her senseless. Judging from the stupid grin plastered on her face and the way she returned his attentions, she was in the same state.

That mood, the perfect, pure elation that swelled in his heart and made him want to dance his way through the day was killed when they got downstairs.

Tony, Steve, and Bruce were sitting around the table, looking like the world had ended.

"What happened?" Natasha asked, immediately in battle mode. If he'd looked at her then, he knew he would see her eyes flickering over the other members of the team, assessing their responses.

"Fury contacted me twenty minutes ago. They've found something," Rogers said, nodding toward a manilla folder in Stark's hands.

"Something?" Clint asked, leaning on the table by Stark's elbow. Tony shifted slightly in his seat so he could see more easily.

They were satellite images mostly, of what looked to be a massive industrial complex in the middle of the jungle. Clint squinted at the photos. The jungle was dense, thick, but it didn't look like the Congo or the Amazon or any of the half dozen other tropical locales he'd been to in his life.

Natasha leaned in over Stark's other shoulder. "Where is this?" she asked.

"Antarctica," Stark said flatly.

Clint exchanged a bewildered glance with Natasha. "Antarctica? Since when are there jungles at the South Pole?"

Stark leafed through the rest of the images, spreading them out in front of him on the table. He pulled one of the pages out, a spy satellite close up of a man.

Or, what used to be a man. He didn't look like any man Clint had ever seen, present company included. It almost looked like he didn't have any skin on his face, just bare flesh poured over bone; his face was nothing more than gleaming red flesh.

"Since this guy showed up again," Stark said, handing him the picture.

"Who is this?" Clint asked.

"The Red Skull," Natasha answered at the same time that Steve said, "Johann Schmidt."

Clint recognized the name from Rogers' files. "I thought he died," he said. "I remember reading that he was on that plane with you, Cap, when you went down over the water."

Rogers shrugged one shoulder. "The tesseract was on that plane, too. Schmidt tried to use it, and when he touched it, he . . . dissolved. I thought he wasdead." Rogers looked up at Clint then, a curious look in his eye. "But then, the tesseract is capable of some pretty strange things."

Wasn't that the truth.

Clint nodded, pushing aside the residual feelings of guilt that would probably always plague him at mentions of the Asgardian device. There was no sense in dwelling on it, even if he always unintentionally froze anytime someone referred to it. He knew that it was a dangerous tell, particularly for someone in his line of work. He'd been working to rid himself of it, but judging from the slight frown on Natasha's face, he needed to work harder. He smiled grimly at her, trying to assuage her worry, but he knew she would corner him the second she got the chance.

"So Schmidt is back from the dead, and what, exactly? What's the facility for?" Clint asked.

"Fury doesn't know, but he wants us to find out," Rogers said. "He thinks it might be connected to HYDRA's recent interest in industrial grade diamonds."

Clint blinked. "Diamonds?"

Banner was the one who responded this time. "Something I noticed, actually, through my own research when I encountered roadblocks in obtaining a sufficient supply for . . ." Realizing that he was rambling, Banner cleared his throat and started over. "I contacted SHIELD a few months ago about it. Apparently, HYDRA has been taking over major diamond mines in Africa and Asia. Whatever they need them for, they've all but shut out all other potential buyers in the market."

Clint debated for a moment before deciding to share what he knew. "I know," he said. "About HYDRA and the diamond mines."

Everyone but Natasha and Stark looked surprised.

He'd already told Natasha all about it, of course, but Stark just said, "I figured Fury sent you to Botswana for a good reason."

Clint had long since learned not to be surprised when Stark knew more about SHIELD operations than he should.

"And?" Banner prompted. "Find anything interesting?"

Clint shook his head. "SHIELD sent me in for recon to confirm the HYDRA presence at the site."

"Which you did," Rogers said.

Clint nodded. Stark twisted in his seat to look up at him. "Just to confirm their presence? Nothing else, Master Assassin?"

Clint set his jaw. The details of his and Natasha's jobs with SHIELD had been one of the points of contention between them, and it probably always would be. Stark wasn't stupid; he understood that sometimes bad things had to be done in the pursuit of the greater good, but that didn't mean he had to _like_ the idea of necessary evils. It certainly didn't mean that Stark wouldn't poke at him every chance he got.

Clint knew that Stark couldn't help himself from picking at open wounds. He knew that Stark found some kind of strange validation from pointing out the flaws that made others just as imperfect as he. That, however, didn't make Clint want to punch the man less when it was his own turn for the infamous Stark laser focus.

He tried to force himself to relax. Stark, for all the blood he had on his hands, it was somewhat more indirect. He didn't understand what it meant to have as much red in his ledger as Clint did; he had no idea what it meant to be personally, physically responsible for the number of deaths that Clint was responsible for. Clint had been there, had seen the faces of the people he'd killed. For the most part, that wasn't true for Stark. Stark's nightmares weren't filled with visions of the death throes of men and women bleeding out around an arrow through their throat.

Briefly, his thoughts flickered to Natasha and the child growing inside of her. He couldn't help but think that maybe they shouldn't, after all. Maybe the baby would be better off without two people like them for parents.

Natasha reached out then, put her hand on his arm before he could say or do something stupid. "Can it, Stark," she said. "Barton did what he needed to do."

Thankfully, Stark let it drop.

Clint breathed out. He needed to get a fucking grip. Stark didn't mean it, or, at least, didn't mean it the way that it was received. Tony had a pathological need to meddle, and Clint should know better than to let him wind him up this way.

"So what does Fury want us to do?" Natasha asked, taking the focus away from Clint. "Recon? Blow the place up?"

Rogers' mouth was set in a firm line. "All of the above, was the impression I got." Steve looked around the room quickly. "We were just discussing whether we wanted to do it when you got here."

At the question no doubt apparent in his eyes, Banner interjected, "JARVIS informed us that you two were already on your way down, or we would have called you."

Clint tilted his head in thanks. He looked over at Natasha, who was chewing thoughtfully on her lip.

"I wonder if James knows anything about this," she said.

Steve frowned. "You think he might?"

She nodded. "It seems awfully coincidental to me that James would show up suddenly, looking for a leading research scientist at the same time that HYDRA was building a secret Antarctic base."

"You don't think he was trying to kill Marino, do you?" Banner said, getting up from his seat.

She shook her head. "No, I don't. And I'd be willing to bet that the mysterious employer he's so twitchy about it HYDRA."

"Let's go find out, then, shall we?" Stark said.

Letting the others step out of the room in front of them, Natasha grabbed his arm and pulled him back slightly, slowing his steps. With an eye to the others, she spoke in a whisper. "You okay?"

He grabbed her hand and squeezed it lightly, grateful that she noticed his hesitation back there. "Yeah," he murmured, nodding firmly. "Fine."

She squinted at him a little bit as if discerning whether he was telling the truth. Satisfied, she smiled and squeezed back. "Well, you know who to call if you want someone punched in the face."

Yeah, he did.

He chuckled softly under his breath as they walked down the corridor, moving more quickly to catch up to the team.

Barnes was asleep when they got to his cell, but he woke quickly, springing to his feet at the sound of the door sliding open. Rogers, Stark, and Banner stayed behind in the anteroom, just as they had before, but Clint followed Natasha inside. Maybe it made him a caveman, and maybe he was having second thoughts about the whole thing, but there was no way in hell he was letting Natasha walk into that room alone.

Barnes stepped toward the bars as Natasha approached.

"This the boyfriend?" Barnes asked, sizing Clint up. Clint fought the urge to smirk. If Barnes thought that would get a rise out of Nat, he had another thing coming. He didn't exactly mind being her called her boyfriend; even if it was stupid, the moniker fit. All the same, he was glad that she wasn't the sort to that kind of thing distract her from the task at hand.

"That's not your concern," she said.

"Why are you here?" Barnes asked, a little calmer than he appeared the last time he and Natasha had been here, when he'd watched her talk to her old friend through the two way mirror. Calmer, yes, but still not the sort to beat around the bush. Clint realized that his straightforwardness was a sign of respect, much like it was with Natasha. They didn't bother to mince words with each other, just came right out and said what they were thinking.

"What were you doing in Rome?" she asked. "Why did you want Marino dead?"

Bewilderment ghosted across Barnes' face, but he recovered quickly. If he didn't have so much experience in reading micro-expressions, Clint doubted that he would have noticed.

"My mission in Rome was not to kill Marino. It never was."

Clint pushed off the wall where he'd been leaning, and walked closer to the bars, standing close to Natasha. "What was it then?"

Barnes flicked his eyes back and forth, as if making a decision. At last, he said, "My employer wanted him alive for some facility or something. He didn't say much, just that he needed someone with Marino's specific expertise."

"Expertise?" Natasha asked.

Barnes shrugged. "I didn't ask, but I'm pretty sure it had something to do with bioweapons and nuclear energy."

"A bomb?" Clint asked.

Barnes eyed him before answering. "No, I don't think so," he said carefully. "It seemed more like they wanted Marino to harness massive amounts of power, and nuclear energy was the only way they could get enough to juice to test it."

That didn't bode well.

"Who hired you, James?" Natasha asked quietly. "You did not answer when I asked you before."

Barnes closed his eyes and turned away from them. "They'll kill me, Natalia," he said, pacing. "Can't you just be glad that they didn't get Marino?"

"If they know we have you, you're already dead," she said, ignoring his question. What she said was true - HYDRA didn't suffer failures, and by all accounts, they'd gotten that way at least partially because of Schmidt.

"Tell us," she prompted again.

Barnes sighed, a resigned sound from deep within his chest. "HYDRA. I was hired by HYDRA to take Marino to an undisclosed location in Brazil."

Natasha scratched her chin. "When?" she asked.

"I was to meet with my contact in two days," Barnes said. "But that's going to be a little hard, now." He gestured to the bars between them. "Unless I can persuade you to let me out of this cage?"

Neither one of them bothered to respond to the taunt.

Barnes tried another tack. "You're going after them, aren't you? HYDRA?"

"Let me go with you," Barnes said when they didn't respond. Clint could picture the disbelief on the faces of his compatriots watching the proceedings from the other side of the glass.

"Why should we do that?" Natasha asked.

"I can help you," he said. "I've worked for them before. I know how they think."

"So do I," Clint pointed out.

Barnes raised his eyebrow, a gesture eerily similar to Natasha's own. "Maybe you think you do, but you've never worked _with_ them, is my guess. You need me."

He wasn't wrong. All the surveillance and interrogations in the world couldn't match first hand experience. If they wanted to infiltrate that facility in Antarctica and come back alive, they needed someone at least moderately familiar with HYDRA's standard operating procedures.

Natasha turned to look at Clint. "What do you think?" she asked, and he could see where she was heading with this.

"I'll back your play," he said, reconfirming what she already knew anyway.

"He's cuffed the whole time," she said. Clint nodded. "We shoot him if he tries anything." Clint nodded again.

Natasha turned back to Barnes. "We'll see what we can do."

They walked back out of the cell, Clint letting Natasha take the lead. He'd expected to find the other Avengers fuming. He'd expected to see them arguing about whether or not he and Natasha could be trusted anymore if they were so willing to work with someone like the Winter Soldier.

Instead, they were silent, watching Rogers end a call.

"What is it?" Clint asked, noting the look on Rogers' face as he pocketed his cell phone.

"Marino didn't report at the research facility where he works this morning. SHIELD intelligence indicates that he was picked up by HYDRA agents outside a cafe."

"Shit," Stark said, the syllable echoing in the still room.

It was what they were all thinking anyway.


	11. Chapter 10

_Thanks to everyone who's stuck with me so far - you guys make this so much fun! THANK you so much for your feedback and follows and just generally being awesome. I appreciate it all so much!_

_As always, if you've got a moment, I'd love to hear what you think!_

* * *

She wasn't sure why she was willing to bring Barnes in on this, but she was. Maybe it was the hormones raging in her body that were making her stupid. Maybe she was getting old and soft.

Or maybe, she thought as she stared at James' hands where they were cuffed behind his back as he walked in front of her, maybe it was time that she gave someone else a chance the way that Clint had given her a chance, the way that Coulson and Fury had given him one before that. Maybe it was time to pay the favor forward.

That didn't mean she was going to be stupid about it, however.

She watched him like a hawk on the short ride to the top of the tower, and she was gratified to see that she wasn't the only one to do so. Maybe the others weren't as stupid as she sometimes thought.

Although they _had_ all agreed to this mission and to letting James tag along, so maybe it wasn't so much that they weren't stupid as it was that she was sinking to their level.

After she and Clint had talked with Barnes, the team met in the conference room, with Fury joining them via sat-comms. He hadn't been pleased when Natasha suggested that they take the Winter Soldier with them (neither had he been particularly happy that they'd taken the man into custody without telling him about it), but she figured if he were truly upset about it, he would try a little harder to forbid them. As it was, he just sighed and told them to be careful.

"Oh," he'd added, almost as if it were an afterthought (except that Fury didn't have those). "Your big Asgardian friend wants to say hello."

Thor's face showed up on the monitor adjacent to the one projecting Fury's. "Greetings, friends! I return at long last from my realm! I would go with you to this Antarctica base that you describe, if you would have me."

That part, at least, was a no-brainer.

They'd agreed to meet Thor on the roof of Stark tower in 30 minutes, and they'd gotten rolling soon after that, suiting up and packing their gear without comment.

Well, mostly without comment.

Clint had been in the armory to gather their weapons when Bruce approached her.

"Are you sure you should be going on this mission?" he asked.

She narrowed her eyes in annoyance. "Why shouldn't I? I'm the best spy in this outfit. And, if I don't miss my guess, you're going to need one hell of a spy to get inside that facility for recon."

She left off the part about how Clint could probably do it, and James could _definitely_ do it, because there was no way anyone was going to trust James to do much of anything beyond limited consulting on this dog and pony show.

Bruce sighed. "I just meant that in your condition . . ." he gestured awkwardly at her waist.

She cut him off. "I'd appreciate if you kept that fact to yourself. As far as anyone else is concerned, I had a stomach bug."

Bruce opened his mouth to add something more, but thought better of it. He moved away from her and started rooting around in the cupboard where they kept some of their more sensitive computing equipment.

Good boy.

It wasn't that the admonishment wasn't warranted, she knew. She _was_ pregnant, and truth be told, it was pretty fucking stupid of her to go out into the field like this. What if something happened? What if she were injured? What if _Clint_ were injured? What was she supposed to do if, if, _if_?

She refused to live her life in hypotheticals.

She'd gone to Rome, after all, had even been in a knock down, drag out fight with Barnes, and nothing had come of it. Her body was pretty damn resilient, after all, and she guessed that strength would extend to her reproductive system as well.

Well, _hoped_ might be a better way to phrase it. She wasn't planning on taking any risks this time around. No putting herself in the line of fire, no running off half-cocked with a tenuous (at best) plan to save the world. No, she was going to do her best to stick the to sidelines and do what she did best: get information without anyone noticing.

She was just starting to congratulate Clint in her mind for trusting her to know her own body, when they reached the roof.

"Nat, wait up a sec," Clint said. There was a funny tone in his voice, and she braced herself. Maybe he wasn't going to be as okay with this as she thought. She thought she heard once or twice that some men acted . . . weird around pregnant women.

She met Rogers' eyes, and he nodded, silently agreeing to keep an eye on Barnes as they walked across the rooftop toward the plane.

She looked at Clint, trying to work out the best way to say her piece.

"Clint, I have to do this," she said, rushing ahead with the first thing that came to mind, trying to head off his protests before he said anything. It wasn't like she didn't have the same reservations herself. "I can't . . ."

He shook his head and reached out to her. His fingers twitched briefly, and she could see him hesitate, see the want, the need to touch her stomach burning in his eyes. She'd been ignoring the same urge all day. He put his hand on her arm instead.

"I know that," he said, and she breathed a little easier. "I know I'm not going to convince you to do anything you don't want to do. I just . . ."

"I'll be careful," she said, readjusting her assumptions. She'd had to do that a lot where Clint was concerned. "No undue risks."

He bit his lip uncertainly. "Please don't hit me for asking this, okay?"

The corner of her mouth twitched, and she shrugged. She kind of had a feeling where this was going anyway.

Staring at a spot somewhere in the middle of her forehead, he said, "Will you let me . . ." he breathed deeply, and let the air out in a single, shaking rush. "Please let me stay with you out there," he finished quickly, racing through the words. "I know you can take care of yourself, but I . . ."

She jabbed him lightly in the ribs to shut him up, then pressed a finger to his lips. "I'd appreciate the backup," she said, and his expression softened.

He reached up then, brushed a stray hair out of her eyes, and she leaned into his touch, as close to nuzzling him as she would ever get in public.

"Thanks," he said simply. He opened his mouth to say more, but Stark interrupted them.

"If you love birds are done playing footsie," he shouted across the roof. "We've got some shit to avenge."

She managed to hide her smile by the time they got to the jet.

* * *

Their only warning was Tony's harshly shouted, "Fuck!" before the shit hit the fan. Red, worrying lights strobed in the cabin and alarms blared. The plane lurched suddenly, dipped, and she felt her stomach fly up into her throat. Clint's arm was there, his fingers gripping hers, and she grabbed him and squeezed back even as she felt the plane start to plummet.

"What the hell is going on up there, Stark?" she called out, trying to contain her gorge. She'd been in worse situations like this, but never when she was . . . like she was. Not that it would stop her.

Stark's reply was a strained, "I can't control it! We're going down!" He was panicked, that much was clear, and they had to do something.

She looked over at Clint, but she needn't have worried; his seat belt was already unbuckled and he was halfway to his feet, heading for the cockpit. She was on his heels, stumbling forward as the plane swayed and plunged nauseatingly through the air, and they pushed Stark and Rogers out of the way when they got to the front.

"Move your asses," she said, not caring to sugar coat it. There wasn't time, and the two of them were the best chance anyone had of walking out of this mess.

"Status?" Clint asked, throwing himself into the pilot seat.

"We lost electrical when we came into range of the continent," Tony said, panic in his voice. "I don't understand it; nothing should have happened!"

"Too bad your plane didn't listen," Natasha said under her breath. She checked the monitors, looking for a way to bypass the failing electrical systems even as Clint yanked on the manual controls. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see the muscles on his arms flex, strained with the force of trying to right the craft. He grunted from the strain.

It wasn't going to be enough.

"Stark!" she shouted over the roar of the alarms and the wind buffeting the plane. "We need power up here!"

"Already on it!" he returned, and she glanced behind her to see him doing some complex maneuver with a spare power cell and some wires. She really hoped he knew what the fuck he was doing.

Time slowed down as they fell from the sky, her attention focused acutely on the instrument panel while she attempted not to recognize that Clint was only managing to level the vessel out slightly. She resolutely refused to look out the windscreen, where the world was tilted at a worrying degree. Clint was growling with the strain of the controls beside her, and he let out a sudden whoop when Tony finally got partial power restored to the front of the plane.

"Can you get anything else rerouted over to me, Nat?" he asked through gritted teeth.

She shook her head, even though she knew he wasn't looking at her. "There's nothing left to reroute. Life support has failed, the rear engines are out, and the only reason we've even got lights is because of the auxiliary power cells."

"What about those?" he asked, and she dared to look outside, noting that they were at least over land now.

So they were going to die in a fiery crash instead of drown. Hooray. She turned her attention back to the matter at hand.

"First thing I checked. No," she replied. The auxiliary power cells were routed through a different network, and even if she could reroute some of that power to navigation, she couldn't get it done soon enough.

"Fuck." He looked over at her, spared a glance in her direction. "Get back in the cabin."

"What?" she sputtered. She knew what he was going to say, but there was no way she was going to leave him up here alone. No way. If they were going down, they were going to do it together. It had always been the two of them, ever since they met, and she wasn't going to cut out and run here at what very well could be the end.

"You can't do anything up here, Nat," he said, attention already back on the controls in his hands. "Strap yourself in. The plane is reinforced better in the back. You've got a better chance of . . . if . . ."

She wanted to shake him, wanted to tell him no, to go fuck himself, but then she remembered what she'd promised him and, more importantly, why she'd made that promise back on that rooftop in New York. Maybe if it still were just the two of them, maybe that would be different, but it wasn't, not anymore.

"You can do this," she said simply, then unstrapped herself. And then, because they weren't melodramatic people who needed confessions of undying love to get them through anything, she added. "See you on the flipside."

She made her way to the back, finding the rest of the team already strapped into their seats. They were coasting more smoothly now, but only barely, and she was able to make it back without clinging too much to the walls.

Then the plane spun, she rolled into the side of one of the seats, and then the world went black.

* * *

When he came to, Clint was almost surprised. It had been a near thing at the end, and when they'd hit the treeline, he was sure that they were done. Or, at least, that he was. He hadn't really expected that he would wake up after a landing like that.

He coughed, trying to rid his lungs of some of the black smoke that had risen from the control panels. He looked up, out the cracked windscreen and saw that he'd made it – jungle as far as he could see.

Well, any landing he could walk away from . . .

He had to cut himself out of his seat; part of the console paneling had been bashed in sometime during the crash, and it must have damaged the locking mechanism because nothing happened when he thumbed the release. Given the state of the rest of the damn plane, he was pretty sure that Stark wouldn't mind.

He pitched forward and rolled out of his seat, landing hard on the console in front of him. He winced first in pain, and then because of the tree that had gone through the glass and into the copilot seat beside him. He silently thanked whoever was listening that Natasha had gone back into the cabin.

He supposed that some people might panic in a situation like this, but he had never been that type, either because of his upbringing or his training in the service. Wherever the truth of the matter lay, instead of hyperventilating, he considered his situation carefully, surveying the damage around him quickly, looking for the storage area that he'd seen listed on the schematics of this thing. Once he climbed out of this place, he didn't want to have to come back down. If there were supplies secreted away here, he was going to take them when he left. He'd been knocked unconscious for however long; the others could wait two more minutes.

He carefully avoided thinking about the condition of the rest of the plane and its occupants.

"Aha," he muttered under his breath, spotting the telltale sign of a metal seam. He pulled out his pocket knife to pry the panel open. He was pleasantly surprised to find the compartment full of survival supplies, and he made a mental note to thank Pepper when he saw her again. Having filled the small pack he'd found inside next to the food bars, he climbed the steep slope back to the rear of the cockpit, grunting with exertion. He kicked open the door that connected the two sections of the plane, hoping to find the others jostled or passed out from pressure changes, but no worse for the wear.

Instead, he found himself staring at the jungle.

The rest of the plane was missing.


	12. Chapter 11

_The next part! The rating really isn't in effect for this chapter, but I'll be sure to make mention of when it's going to happen in the notes before it does!_

_Thank you to everyone who's been reading, reviewing, and just generally being awesome enough to stick with me on this one! You guys are the best!_

_As always, I love hearing what you think!_

* * *

The glow of fire led him like a beacon through the woods, and he slashed through the dense undergrowth, cutting a path as he went. He hadn't felt such a sense of urgency since he'd been on Asgard and he'd come to with Frigga staring down at him, asking him if he was okay.

Just as he had then, he tried not to think about what might have happened to Natasha and the others while he was elsewhere.

It wasn't that he really thought his presence would have made a difference in the rear of the plane. Regardless of what had happened after he blacked out, he knew damn well that his actions were the main reason the plane had landed as well as it had (the rest of that narrow difference between life and death consisting of the superior engineering of the craft). He'd done all that he could, but he hated not knowing the fate of the others.

He hated not knowing what had happened to Natasha and the . . . what happened to Natasha.

Now that he'd been walking and the adrenaline and confusion had dissipated, he started to catalogue the events that took place in between the time he and Natasha had traded spots with Stark and Rogers. He kept going over and over in his mind what he could have done differently, if there was anything he could have changed to make a difference in the outcome, anything he could have done to keep the plane together. He kept drawing a blank, though that didn't keep him from self-recrimination. He should have been stronger, faster, better, less . . . human.

Instead, though, he was, if not as frail as the average Joe, certainly weak enough to let the goddamn plane crash in the jungle, and now he was tracking the aft section of the plane by the red tinge to the jungle in front of him.

And if that weren't enough to set him on edge (and, oh, it sure as hell was), the last thing he remembered before hitting the treeline was the roar of the Hulk cutting through the noise of the warning sirens and the rush of wind.

He shivered in the warm, damp night air.

He pushed through the woods, focusing on the task at hand, the hack and slash of the machete that he'd found tucked in with the emergency supplies (why the hell Pepper had included the damn thing there, he'd never know, but he certainly was glad for it). There would be time for figuring all of that shit out once he found the others, once he found . . .

"Natasha?" he called, popping out into a clearing and finding burning chunks of what used to be Stark's state of the art jet in front of him. The bulk of the tail section was a twisted clump of metal, and his stomach twisted just looking at it.

He scanned the wreckage and found the others were there, moving around in the smoke. Stark was kneeling on the ground, bent over what looked like Banner's prone form. At least he still wasn't hulked out. That'd be all they'd need right now – trying to calm down an enraged Hulk while picking through the wreckage of the plane.

He moved in closer, looking for Natasha. Fuck, where the hell was she?

"Barton! Glad to see you're okay!" Rogers said when he approached, but Clint wasn't concerned with any of that. There was only one thing on his mind.

"Where is she?" he asked, grabbing on to Steve's forearms as all of his worries came crashing down on him at once. Everyone he could see looked intact, they all looked fine, but where was she? He couldn't breathe, couldn't think straight, didn't know what the fuck he was doing here, why he'd let her come along on this bat shit insane mission, and if she was hurt, if something happened to her, to their . . .

"Clint?"

He whirled at the sound, recognizing her voice over the din of the fire and the sounds of the jungle at night.

There she was, on the edge of the clearing, standing well away from the flames, shielding herself from the heat and smoke.

He let go of Steve and rushed to her side, heedless of the world falling apart around him. Natasha was pale and bleeding from a cut in her forehead. It looked shallow though, the sort of thing that bled a mess, but wasn't indicative of a lot of damage. Besides, she was standing and walking and breathing and smiling and now she was in his arms, and she was _alive._ She had her hands locked around his back while he held the her head against his chest, and even if they _were_ on the bottom of the damn world in a tropical fucking jungle, even if they had crash landed and lost their only shot at getting back to civilization, none of that shit mattered because she was here and alive and fine.

"Worried about you," he whispered, more out of a desire to conserve energy than any true worry that someone might hear him.

"Yeah, me, too." Her fists clenched more tightly in the fabric of his jacket, and he swore he could see a hint of a tear glisten in the firelight. "When I didn't see the front of the plane, I thought . . ."

She turned her face into his neck, shaking against him, and he held her tighter while she rode through the worst of it. He knew how she felt, and he clung to her just as desperately, just as happy to see her alive.

Eventually, he leaned back, taking her face in his palms to get a better look at her. He brushed his thumb near the wound on her forehead, and she winced.

"Fell against one of the seats," she said, and he cringed, knowing just how hard that kind of metal structure could be.

"You're okay, though?" he asked, his eyes flickering down to her waist. "You're . . . both of you. . .?"

She nodded. "Yeah," she said, the corners of her mouth turning up. "I'm . . . _we're_ fine. The Hulk kind of . . . You know I don't even know what to say about it," she said. "He just picked me up and jumped out of the plane when it broke up. He kept me away from the worst of it. Besides, Russian women are tough."

He grinned back at her. "Don't I know it. All knocked up and you're still tougher than me."

"Better believe it, Barton," she said, and then she leaned up and kissed him. He was so absorbed in the taste of her and the sheer relief of finding her alive that he didn't notice they had company for several moments.

"Thought you said he wasn't your boyfriend, Natalia."

He broke away to find Barnes, still handcuffed, leaning on a tree and watching them with a closed expression. Clint took a step back from Natasha, knowing that she wasn't into public displays. He wasn't either, especially not when the public displays were in view of ex-Russian spies that may not be so "ex."

"I never said that," Natasha rejoined coolly.

Barnes smirked. "Implied."

"Not my fault that you're easy to fool."

There was something else going on there, Clint could tell, something beneath the surface, but it wasn't something that he dared interrupt or question. Natasha knew what she was doing, and if it was something important, she'd fill him in the first chance they had.

"So, uh, you think you can get me out of these cuffs?" Barnes asked. "I think maybe our circumstances have changed since our arrival."

Natasha narrowed her eyes. "I'll be the judge of if and when that happens," she said.

"Let's move back with the others," Clint said, motioning with his head over to wear Banner was sitting up, the others standing around him. "Looks like Bruce has rejoined that party."

Natasha didn't say anything to him, just ordered Barnes to walk in front of them, warning him against doing anything stupid. Honestly, though, there was little they could do if he really wanted to get away. They didn't exactly have the resources to spare to track him down.

Barnes didn't try anything though, just did as he was told. Clint suspected that Barnes would continue to do so, and he was sure that Natasha was thinking the same thing; anybody who survived the things Barnes had wasn't stupid, and known elements were always a safe bet in tenuous circumstances. Clint would be frankly surprised if he tried to get away before they figured out where they were in relation to the HYDRA base.

"I know Bruce took care of you, and I can guess about Tony and Thor, but how'd the others make it?" he asked conversationally as they walked.

Natasha didn't move her eyes from Barnes when she said, "They hitched a ride with the fly boys."

"And no one thought to take a second to get me?"

Barnes cleared his throat ahead of them. "Tried, but when the plane hit the treeline, the door to the cockpit locked. Steve tried to go for you, but we ran out of time."

Clint looked to Natasha for confirmation, but she just shrugged. "I was a pretty out of it, but you know I would have . . ."

Clint shook his head and grabbed her hand. He knew.

"We all made it, then," Rogers said when they approached, sounding grimly pleased. Banner groaned as he let Stark help him up off the ground.

"Some of us more intact than others," Bruce said, rubbing the back of his neck. He looked over at Clint. "Thanks for getting us down safely, Barton."

Clint nodded, strangely touched, although he studiously ignored Stark's protest over the word "safely".

They'd started to discuss their options when they heard a roar in the distance. Whatever had made that noise didn't sound friendly.

"We need to move," Steve said.

No one argued.

* * *

They walked through the jungle in the dark, trying to find an out of the way place to regroup, get their bearings, and take stock of their supplies. It might not have been the best idea to travel at night through unfamiliar territory, but staying around the wreckage of the plane was an even worse idea, especially given the sounds the forest was making around them.

She had been in jungles all over the world, had seen the deepest, most secret dark interiors of the planet, but nothing had ever sounded quite like this place. It was started to creep her out, to be honest, and on top of all that they had HYDRA to worry about. If the fires of the wreckage had drawn in . . . whatever the hell had made that noise, who knew what else it was attracting.

The ease with which they'd fallen into a line was a testament to their team dynamic. Rogers had taken up the front without question, followed by Stark in his (malfunctioning) suit, Barnes, then Natasha (she planned on sticking to James like glue), with Clint bringing up the rear behind her. It was an easy formation, one best suited to their strengths, and it was just another one of those things that made her more glad every day that she had joined this outfit, that she got to work with these people.

The length and stress of the day was starting to catch up to her, and even though she knew that they could be going for hours yet, she was already swaying on her feet. She was exhausted and a little light headed, but she was determined to keep going for as long as it took. She was the Black Widow, infallible master spy, and she would not be defeated by something as simple as a plane crash and a march through the forest. She didn't even have to cut her own path, for shit's sake.

And then she tripped over a stray branch, somehow not seeing it when everyone else in front of her had avoided it. Her arm flew reflexively across her middle as she prepared to topple to the ground, but then Clint was there, grabbing her elbow to steady her, pulling her firmly upright and letting her gather her balance before dropping to an easy pace beside her.

"Thanks," she said quietly, hoping that no one else had noticed her stumble. It didn't seem like it – no one turned back to see what happened. Still, she was going to keep her voice down. No sense in drawing unnecessary attention.

"How are you holding up?" Clint asked, and the unexpected, deep rage that had been simmering under her surface bubbled up, and she almost snapped at him for coddling her. She couldn't believe he would ask her something like that. She'd tripped, not been shot! What the fuck was his problem? What made him think that he could . . .

She took a deep breath, consciously making an effort to calm herself down.

What the hell was wrong with her? Were all pregnant women like this? She recognized that he wasn't coddling her; she knew that. She'd tripped, and he'd steadied her. All he was doing was checking to make sure that his partner was okay. She'd do the same damn thing were their situations reversed.

She took a deep breath and pretended that the hormones rushing through her body had no bearing on her mental state.

So she shrugged and told him the truth. "More tired and annoyed than anything."

Clint fished around in his pack, producing a foil wrapped bar. "Here," he said, offering it to her. "You should eat this."

She raised an eyebrow. "I'm not really hungry right now."

At least, she hadn't thought she was. The moment he drew attention to it, of course, her stomach growled audibly.

He chuckled, pushing the protein bar into her hand. "I think the . . ." He directed a cautious eye toward the people picking their way through the jungle ahead of them, then amended his statement. "I think your stomach has different ideas."

She took the bar with a roll of her eyes and a tiny smile, tearing the wrapper back and taking a bite. Once she'd started, she was glad that he'd given it to her; she really was hungry, now that the opportunity presented itself, and the high density protein tasted better than she thought it could. There was even some chocolate in there.

"Thanks," she said when she was done, carefully pocketing the wrapper.

He pulled her against his side while they forged ahead, pressing a swift kiss to the crown of her head. "No prob," he whispered.

She squeezed his side in reply.

* * *

They found a cave, of all things, a few miles out from the wreckage of the plane, and they'd agreed to hole up there for the night.

Rogers had wanted to keep going, but after taking a look at the faces of the rest of his team, he'd changed his mind. Even if he didn't directly say that he was only stopping because the less enhanced members of the team were looking fatigued, Clint could tell that he was thinking it. The realization didn't bother him as much as it might have once; Natasha had been looking paler and paler over the past mile, and he knew she would never stop on her own.

Rogers took over babysitting duty on Barnes, for which Clint was grateful. They could trust him to keep an eye out for any funny business, and maybe Nat would let herself get a few hours sleep before the sun came up.

Of course, that was assuming that the sun was going to come up at all. He remembered the cold weather training he and Nat had been forced to undergo a few years back in Alaska, and if the day and night cycle was anything like that, he figured if they got any daylight at all, it would be brief.

Well, at least this place was warmer than Alaska had been.

It was strangely lit here, anyway, even discounting the light coming from the crank lamp they'd set up in the middle of the space. He made a sweep of the cave, tossing energy bars at the others before settling against the wall next to Natasha. He offered her another bar.

"You sure we got enough for me to have another one of those?" she asked, but he could see the hunger in her eyes. "We could be stuck here a while."

He shrugged, pressing it into her hands anyway. If it came to it, she could eat his share of the emergency rations. He wasn't stupid enough to stop eating in a place like this, but he figured he would be able to find something edible in the jungle tomorrow.

"Still a bunch left," he lied.

She raised an eyebrow, but she'd already torn the wrapper back and was munching away. Her desire for calories wasn't going to be overpowered by noble intention tonight, at least. Good.

Casting an eye around, he saw that Bruce was already curled in on himself, asleep, tired out from the change. Tony was out like a light, too, but again, that wasn't exactly surprising. Thor was standing guard at the mouth of the cave, pacing slowly back and forth, and Rogers was deep in conversation with Barnes, talking lowly in the night.

Clint put one arm around Natasha's shoulders, pulling her close, and then drew his other down to her waist. "Still doing okay?" he asked, rubbing gently. He'd never been a worrier, and he understood completely why Natasha wanted to be here, why she _needed_ to be here for this, but that didn't make him less nervous. His brain might understand the reasons for her presence, but his heart wanted her somewhere else, somewhere safer, someplace that they didn't had even odds for leaving alive.

"You need to stop worrying, Clint," she said, dropping her warm hand down over his and squeezing. "Something could happen to either one of us anywhere, at any time."

"I know that," he said, exhaling slowly. "It's just . . ."

She smiled at him in the dim light. "Believe me, I _know_," she said. "This isn't exactly ideal. But everything is fine right now, and until that situation changes, I'm not going to worry about it."

He chuckled a little, falling in love with her a little more for the determination, the absolutely surety with which she spoke. "Can you forgive me for it?" he asked. "For worrying?"

She dropped her head down to his shoulder. "Wouldn't be you if you didn't."

* * *

It was still dark out four hours later when she woke up, Clint's insistent hand shaking her and his finger pressed against her lips, warning her to be quiet.

She rose silently, instantly wide awake. She drew her knife and crept to the front of the cave behind Clint, keeping her back flat against the wall, seeing the rest of the team do the same thing.

It took a moment before she heard what had caused him to wake her, but then came the unmistakeable sound of a group of men marching through the underbrush.

They came out of the darkness one by one, marching across the small clearing in front of the cave.

"Should we check that out?" one of the men asked, motioning toward their position.

The man in front nodded, stabbing a finger toward the cave. "Franco, you're up." The man must not have expected Franco to find anything, however, because he spurred his unit on, back into the jungle, reminding Franco to catch up with them later.

Franco only made it a foot into the cave, his mouth opening to call out a warning to his compatriots before Rogers melted out of the shadows to silence the man.

"Should have just killed him, Rogers," she said, crouching over the body and getting to work on stripping the man. They had a very narrow window of opportunity. "Would have saved us a lot of trouble."

"Not killing someone is always worth a little added trouble, Romanoff," he replied, and she wondered, not for the first time, how a man like Steve Rogers managed to get through a world war.

Then again, she thought absentmindedly, tugging the goon's pants down and passing them off to Clint, who was already shedding his own clothing, Rogers really didn't survive that war.

"I don't think you're going to find any loose change," Stark said. He frowned. "What are you doing, anyway?"

She looked up briefly from her task of undoing the buttons on the man's uniform when James answered for her.

"Barton is going to follow that squad back to their base of operations," he said, then looked at Natasha. "Thought given Franco here's body type, I'd be the better candidate."

"You're not going anywhere, Barnes," she said, handing Clint the shirt. She looked over at Bruce, then. "Tie this guy up?"

She ignored the rest of the team, who'd started nattering on about what they'd were going to do about having another hostage to watch, instead turning to Clint who was now checking the gun Franco had on him.

"It's not the greatest, but it'll do in a pinch," he said.

She rolled her eyes with a smirk. "Please, Clint. We all know your opinion on anything created following the advent of farming."

He stuck his tongue out at her, then tugged Franco's hat down over the short spikes of his hair. "How do I look?"

She handed him one of her knives. "Like an idiot in camo."

"The usual, then," he said through a grin, then saluted her with the tips of his fingers. "Back before you know it."

He sped off after the HYDRA team, disappearing into the black.


	13. Chapter 12

_Thanks so much to all you lovely people who've been reviewing - you guys keep me going! This is totally all for you :-)_

_Special thanks on this part to elvestinkle for listening to me whine about plot details, and for helping me keep the conversations to the point. Love you!_

_As always, I love hearing what you think! You guys make me a better writer!_

* * *

"We're not that far away from the base, actually," Clint said when he got back. "But it's going to be one hell of a task to get inside there without being noticed. The place is pretty well guarded for being in the middle of fucking nowhere."

Rogers nodded thoughtfully. "Good thing you're here, Romanoff," he said, either not noticing or ignoring the discomfiture in Banner's eyes. "Think you can do it?"

"That depends," she said. "Barton?"

He'd been unbuttoning Franco's shirt as they talked, and he handed it now to Natasha. "If any of us can, it's going to be Nat. Patrols were coming in and going out at fairly regular intervals, about every twenty minutes. Comm chatter indicated that it was out of the ordinary, though." He looked over at Rogers. "They found our wreckage. They know we're here."

"They know about Franco?" Stark asked.

Clint shook his head. "Nobody looked too close at me when we got back to the base, and I got out of there pretty easily. I don't think they realize he's gone yet."

"It's only a matter of time before they do," Barnes said. "They'll figure it out soon enough."

"All the more reason," Natasha said, "For me to get a move on. This job has an expiry date."

She finished buttoning the shirt Clint had handed her, tucking into her pants. The shirt was too big and the black of her pants didn't match the uniform exactly, but it would have to do - there was no way she could wear the trousers Clint had on without arousing suspicion. She reached up and plucked the cap off his head, shoving the sweaty thing down over her head.

"Still say it should be me going in," Barnes said quietly. "You really don't look like a HYDRA agent."

Natasha didn't grace that with a response, but Bruce did.

"Maybe we could let him try . . ." he said, but she cut him off, knowing precisely why Bruce didn't want her to infiltrate the facility.

"None of us were willing to trust him before. You didn't speak up when Clint went for recon," she said, her tone harsher than she meant. Bruce was just looking out for her, she knew that, but this was low risk, in her opinion. She could do this kind of thing in her sleep.

"That was different, and you know it," Bruce replied softly, a wounded look in his eyes. She hardened her gaze, trying to shut him up before he let anything else slip.

"I've got the comms unit Stark made," she pointed out, pulling out the item in question and testing it quickly. "If I run into trouble, I'll signal."

"Natasha can handle this, Bruce," Rogers said, putting his hand on Banner's shoulder. "You know that."

She could tell that Bruce wanted to say more, that he wanted to let everyone in on her secret, that he was veritably bursting with the weight of it, but then he breathed in through his nose and out through his mouth and collected himself.

"Yeah," Bruce said. "I know she can." He shuffled off then, stepping outside to cool down a little more. She noticed Tony's eyes tracking his motions, noticed the concerned expression on his face, so she wasn't totally surprised when he spoke.

"I can't believe that I'm the one to point this out, but do we even need to go in there?" Stark asked. "Why not just try to find a way to signal SHIELD? Wait out here for another team to come by or something? They aren't going to leave us out here."

"I am unaccustomed to remaining idle in such matters, friend," Thor said.

Rogers nodded. "I'm with Thor. We came here for a reason. Finding out what HYDRA is up to is also our best bet for getting out of here."

"Then we should just tear the place apart. We've got a lot of power on our side," Stark said, gesturing around at the team. "We could take them."

"I do not think it wise to proceed without further reconnaissance," Thor said. "I do not enjoy surprises in battle."

"Really, Fabio?" Stark said. "I'm surprised to hear you agreeing to send the spies in first. Don't you usually favor the smite-first-ask-questions-later approach?"

"I'm going in," Natasha said before Tony managed to turn the bickering into an all out argument. They couldn't afford that here, not with HYDRA looking for them and two captives on their hands. "This isn't a discussion."

Stark threw up his hands. "Okay, spider lady. Don't chew off my head."

She rolled her eyes, then turned to Clint. "Coming?"

* * *

Clint walked through the jungle with her most of the way, showing her the path he took out to the HYDRA base. Technically, he could have given her directions and let her strike out on her own, but she was glad that he was going with her, that he was going to be waiting for her outside the site. She'd long since grown used to having him at her back, and even if the rudimentary comms that Stark had whipped up for them out of spare parts weren't precisely SHIELD issue, she felt a hell of a lot more comfortable heading into the jaws of the enemy with his voice in her ear.

He waited until they'd been walking for ten minutes before he said anything.

"So, are we going to talk about this?" he said, throwing a glance back at her over his shoulder.

She sidestepped an errant branch in her path. "Is this really the best time?"

"The way our lives seem to go? Things aren't going to get much better," he said, hacking away at the underbrush.

"Fair enough," she said. Feeling oddly nervous, she asked, "What did you want to say?"

"I wanted to know if . . ." he hesitated, and then he stopped the steady slash of his machete, turning around to face her. "I wanted to know if you were sure about . . ."

He looked wary of her, and she knew she could break him with a single word, knew that his entire heart was already in this thing, that he already loved the tiny spark of life inside her as much as he loved her. Not entirely sure of what she was doing until she'd already grabbed his hand, she pressed his palm against her belly and leaned in close.

"I don't say things I don't mean, not like that," she said. "It wasn't a spur of the moment decision or something I said without thinking or anything other than the truth. I want this."

"You want this," he repeated, disbelief and joy wrapped thick around his voice, smothering it with its weight and depth. "I don't think I'm used to the idea yet."

"Well, you've got a couple of months to get there," she said with a smile.

His returning grin was soft, but still strained, and she could see that there were other doubts lurking there. This wasn't all about her wants, then.

"What aren't you saying?" she said, touching his face gently with one finger.

He turned into her touch, kissing her finger. He swallowed.

"I'm not sure . . . What I mean to say is . . ." He looked down at the ground for a moment before meeting her eyes. "Are you sure we're cut out for this? Look at what we do for a living, Nat. Should we really be thinking about having a kid?"

She'd had those doubts herself. She was still having them, to be honest, and she recognized that she probably would be a little more cautious if Bruce hadn't been breathing down her neck, trying to control her. Clint at least knew better than to try to force her to do anything she didn't want to do. He knew her reactions, he knew _her_. He wasn't wrong, though. They led dangerous lives.

"I think," she said carefully, "That we can make this work if we want to."

"But what if . . ." he started, but she stopped him.

"Do you want to do this?" she asked him again, because that's really what all of this boiled down to. He was either in or they were both out. "Seriously, Clint, are you on board for raising this kid with me? Just say the word and . . ."

"Yes," he said. "I have never wanted anything as much in my life. I want this so badly that I can taste it."

"Then we'll make it work," she said, inching closer to him and stepping into his arms.

"We'll make it work," he said, and it sounded like he was starting to believe it.

"Damn straight," she agreed. She leaned in close then, twining her arms around his neck and kissing him for all she was worth because they might have been in the middle of a jungle on the wrong side of the planet, but she wanted this, she wanted a family. She wanted this with _him_.

His tongue moved restlessly against hers, and she knew that if they weren't on a timetable, they'd be half out of their clothes by now. When he pulled back from her, she could taste the reluctance in him, knew that he wanted her as much as she wanted him.

"Guess we have to table this discussion," he said wryly.

"For now," she promised.

He touched her cheek before turning, and when they traveled forward, it was with renewed vigor, the mood considerably lighter between them.

He stopped short just over half an hour later when the jungle in front of them started to clear, and she could make out the sky between the trees.

"It's just over that ridge," he said. "Try to find a patrol to blend . . ."

She touched his arm. "This isn't my first dog and pony show," she said, not able to keep all of the amused annoyance out of her voice.

He chuckled under his breath. "Yeah, I know."

He touched her belly lightly in a gesture that was rapidly becoming a habit and one that she was getting used to at that. She clasped his hand lightly where it rested on her.

"I'll be careful."

"I know."

He brushed her cheek with his free hand, and she felt her heart clench. He bent, his lips grazing over hers. Even that small contact, that light caress made her feel just a little better, a little stronger, a little braver. Maybe it was stupid, but there it was.

"Doesn't mean I'm not going to be holding my breath until you're back," he said, pulling back and dragging his thumb over the fullness of her bottom lip.

"Don't get sappy now, Barton," she said, feeling a grin stretch over her face.

"You know you like it," he said, and he took a few steps back, putting distance between them, making her departure just a little easier. She loved him a little more in that moment, knew that he was doing it deliberately.

"I do like it," she said, taking a drink from her canteen with a shrug. "I just was hoping you could save some of it for when we get some alone time."

His hand on the tree she knew he would be waiting in until she returned, he winked at her.

"You can bet on it, babe."

* * *

A patrol came along sooner than she'd anticipated, appearing out of the dense forest only a few minutes after she'd hunkered down to wait. It had been a simple task for her to fall into step behind them, to slowly make her way closer as they approached the entrance to the camp, and when they'd passed through the gate, she walked inside the compound without any trouble.

She supposed operating in the ass end of nowhere made people a little lax in their security measures.

That, and she doubted they were expecting someone like her. Or, at least, if they were anything like the people who ran the organizations she'd infiltrated this way in the past, they just weren't expecting someone to brazenly stroll through their front door.

Under the guise of swatting at a bug, she tapped the receiver in her ear twice, rapidly, the signal she'd agreed upon with Clint to let him know that she was inside the building. Just like they'd agreed before, he tapped back, not trusting that the frequency was unmonitored.

She would never admit it out loud, but walking down these halls, dressed in the clothes of the guard, she felt completely and utterly vulnerable. It was like an persistent itch in the middle of her back, the single spot she couldn't reach, and she was shocked to find how much she disliked the feeling. She'd never felt nervous like this before, never, not once in her life, and it was disturbing.

She didn't need to think too hard to figure out why.

She walked down one nondescript hallway, yet another in a series of nondescript hallways, and if it weren't for the training she'd had drilled into her as a child, she was sure she would have been lost by now. As it stood, she was having a little bit of trouble keeping her mental map updated as she took stock of the place. There was very little going on here, if she were to judge solely based on the surface of things, but surely there had to be some kind of central control area or a room with a bank of security monitors around somewhere. She just had to be patient.

A HYDRA agent turned a corner, taking the corridor briskly.

She fisted her hands at her sides, then forced herself to relax her grip. She concentrated on her breathing; there was no reason for anyone to suspect her. She was supposed to be here. She worked here. Everything was normal. Everything was right.

She passed him, her face carefully neutral.

The agent moved on down the passage without a second glance, and she let out the breath she'd been holding. She needed to get a handle on herself. She was a professional, dammit. She did this shit all the time.

Dropping her pace back to an unconcerned saunter, she rounded another bend.

_Now that was more like it_, she thought. In front of her, spread out wide and clearly labeled was what looked to be a map of the top levels of the compound, laid out for her inspection. She paused in front of it, locating the room she'd been looking for.

Jackpot.

She moved through the next few twists and turns with renewed purpose, feeling something like her old self again. She even nodded a greeting at the next HYDRA agent she saw, and when she got to her destination, she glanced up and down the hall before picking the lock and slipping inside. Less than five seconds and a few well placed punches later, the guard was collapsed in an unmoving heap on the floor, and she was, for all intents and purposes, alone.

The bank of monitors spread out before her, some of them flicking through a series of cameras, others fixed on single points. One of the fixed cameras in particular caught her attention. She leaned in, tapped a few keys, trying to zoom in on the picture.

The camera was trained on a small room with what looked to be some kind of particle accelerator in the center of the room. The accelerator itself was behind some kind of thick glass, and it looked like a monitoring station was set up outside.

"What the hell . . .?" she muttered under her breath when a small group of men suddenly appeared in the room. Two of them were armed, and they watched behind the glass as another pair of men escorted a fifth man toward the machine. One of the unarmed escorts pressed a button on the side of the machine, and a door she hadn't noticed before slid open, revealing a small chamber into which they forced the other man, locking him in to his obvious protestations.

A light started to strobe in the room, and the men outside the machine backed away with haste, the armed ones breaking away entirely and leaving the room, though they still remained in the antechamber outside the door, watching the proceedings through the glass. She frowned at the monitor, unable to identify just what was going on inside the chamber, beyond the fact that it looked like they were running some kind of test. A minute passed, then another, while the men in the little room stood still, monitoring the machine, and Natasha was starting to get bored.

And then the guards inside the accelerator chamber started to freak out. They were clawing at their faces, running for the door, but it didn't do any good – the armed guards had long since locked them in the room.

She had to turn away when the men on the monitor started to . . . _melt_, for lack of a better word. She touched her stomach, swallowing to contain her gorge. She wasn't sure what they were testing down there, but whatever it was, it needed to be stopped. Besides the dozen or more human rights violations happening in that room, whatever the scientists were up to, it couldn't be good.

She bent to check the pulse of the guard she'd knocked out earlier. He was still out like a light, and she hoped like hell that he would stay that way for the immediate future. She glanced back at the monitors to find a small group of men headed her way.

Five quick taps sounded in her ear, coming in loud and clear, Clint's signal that something was up and she needed to get out of there, fast.

Time for a tactical retreat.

* * *

She could tell that he'd started to get antsy when he dropped down from the tree in front of her, his hands shaking a little.

"Hey," she said, reaching for the canteen he offered her. She felt his eyes on her as she drank. She knew that he couldn't stop himself from looking her up and down, checking her for any outward sign that she'd been hurt. There wasn't anything, of course; she hadn't been injured, but his concern warmed her all the same.

She handed him back his canteen, and they started pushing their way back through the jungle, back toward their base camp. He was guiding her on a different path this time, though, breaking new ground through the forest rather than following the trail they'd taken in.

Something definitely was up.

"What happened?" she asked, neatly sidestepping a log that stretched across the ground. At least she was getting better at that.

He pulled out the machete to cut through some vines, holding aside a few stray fronds for her.

"Caught a patrol coming in. Maybe even the same one that ran into us earlier; they knew Franco was missing."

"There goes our advantage," she said.

He chuckled. "Think you took care of that yourself, sweetheart."

He wasn't wrong; any element of surprise they might have had would have been destroyed the moment someone discovered that guard she'd knocked out in the security office.

"What do you want to do?" she asked, wanting to be on the same page as him before they got back to camp.

He shrugged, moving out ahead of her again. "We still need to find a way out of here, and I spotted some jets when I was doing recon earlier."

She nodded, having noticed the same thing. "I think . . ." she started softly, not sure how to say what she needed. She swallowed hard, then tried again. "I think we need to shut the place down, too."

He threw a frown over his shoulder at her. "Did you find something?"

"They're experimenting on humans down there, Clint," and she could hear the tremor in her voice, could hear the weakness. He stopped suddenly at her words, held out his hand to her, and squeezed her palm in his. He knew what that kind of thing would drag up for her. He'd asked once, long ago, about the things the Red Room had done to her, and she'd told him, but he'd never treated her differently because of it, never acted like it made her less worthy or weak or anything of the sort. He'd taken it so well, in fact, that she usually forgot that he knew everything about her, that he knew her secrets.

And then he did something like this, holding her hand tightly when they could move more quickly on their own, when they should be ignoring her stupid feelings. He did something like this, and he made her feel just a little better.

Shit, she loved him.

Swiping at her eyes, she said, "I'm fine. We need to move."

They pressed on, but he held her hand all the way back.

* * *

When they got back to the camp, Rogers and the others were on the verge of panic.

"Lady Natasha! Friend Clint! It is good to see you!" Thor said too loudly. "We had feared for your safety after the HYDRA agent eluded our grasp."

Clint blinked. "You let him get away?"

Rogers had the decency to look ashamed. "We were all busy with other things. Me with Barnes, Bruce and Tony with the equipment, and Thor was watching the perimeter. We didn't even realize the guy was awake . . ."

"And he just slipped away," Natasha said, annoyance laced through her voice. He knew she was thinking that they should have just killed him the first place, he even agreed with her, but there was nothing they could do about that now. He put his hand on the small of her back to ground her in the present. It worked, or, at least, it worked enough that she didn't explode.

"Learn anything interesting?" Rogers asked, awkwardly trying to change the subject. It was times like these that reminded Clint of just how young the kid was, despite his abilities. "What's HYDRA up to?"

Natasha shook her head, moving past her anger. "Some kind of nuclear powered experimentation, as far as I could tell."

"Didn't we already know that?" Stark asked, looking up from where he was tinkering with his suit, spread out on the ground in front of him.

Clint saw her bristle, could practically see her hackles rise, and he almost moved in to defend her, when Bruce said, "I'm sure there's more than just that. Right, Natasha?"

She moved a step toward Clint before she answered, not moving enough to be noticeable to anyone else, playing it off as if she were just shifting her weight. He could tell though that she was doing it to get closer to him, to feel him at her side while she was uncomfortable. It was an old habit of hers, an unconscious one that had started before they'd even slept together, and the familiarity of it was just as comforting to him in this strange place.

"They were experimenting on people," she said quietly, drawing everyone's gaze at that. "I saw them put a man inside some kind of machine. I think something must have gone wrong though because an alarm went off and the men inside the room with the machine, they . . ." she trailed off and swallowed, wincing.

"They what?" Bruce asked carefully.

She rubbed her eyes. "They melted."

"Melted?" Thor asked. "Please explain this."

"I don't know how to describe it. They were fine one moment, but the next they were screaming, and then they . . . I've never seen anything like it before."

"I have."

Clint turned at the sound of Barnes' voice. He looked as shaken as Natasha.

"You have?" Steve asked.

Barnes nodded. "In the 80s in Russia. We . . ." He forcefully corrected himself. "_They_ were working with nuclear energy, trying to create a machine that could churn out more of . . ." He glanced at Steve. "Well, more of us, actually."

"How successful were they?" Stark asked.

"Not very," Barnes replied. "As far as I knew, they never got anything off the ground. Just did the kinds of things that Natasha described to a lot of people. Sometimes, worse things."

Clint repressed a shudder.

"But that's what the Russians were up to - what's HYDRA have to do with all of this?" Banner asked.

"No idea," Barnes said. "But I wouldn't be surprised if HYDRA got its hands on the tech and is trying to develop it. That kind of thing - made to order super soldiers would be worth one hell of a load of money."

"We need to get back in there," Rogers said. "We need to stop them."

"You really think you can? Cut off one head, two more grow in it's place," Barnes said. It sounded like he was quoting.

"Oh, we definitely can," said Steve. "And then we'll cauterize the damn wound."

Tony smirked. The gesture spoke for everyone.


	14. Chapter 13

_Thanks to all of you lovely people for bearing with me while I get this thing posted! My life has been rather hectic this past week (and, thus, ate all my free time), and I'm sorry for not getting this out there sooner!_

_As always, I love hearing what you think! This chapter gave me hives trying to kick it into shape, and I hope that it works for you guys!_

* * *

They moved their base of operations after the HYDRA agent disappeared. It was too dangerous to stay in the cave; as much as they'd hated to move even further away from the compound, they weren't ready to defend from a full scale assault. They needed time to plan, consider their actions, and, more than anything, time to figure out what they were going to do.

Oddly enough, they'd found another group of caves a few miles out from the first, though these looked like they'd been lived in recently. He and Natasha both had immediately recognized the signs of human habitation – char and ashes from a fire and the stone circle that had contained it, the smoothed out ground where someone had slept on a pallet. Still, the occupation wasn't terribly recent, and he'd agreed with Nat that they could risk the former inhabitant's return in favor of an out of the way place to plan their attack.

Their new camp felt safer than the first, and really the only part that had given either of them pause was at the small pile of bones at the mouth of the cave. Most of them bore knife marks, nicks in the bone obviously caused by a blade. It was the other marks that puzzled him, the ones that reminded him of the marks the lions left on bones back in his circus days. The tooth marks looked like that, if not a little bigger.

Strange.

Barnes had been the one to spot the cave hidden in the recess of a large stone outcropping. It was stuff like that, all the little things adding up that made Clint start to think that Barnes had really been telling the truth all along, that when he ran into Natasha and the team in Rome, he'd well and truly given up on his former employers.

It wasn't as if such a thing hadn't happened before.

The simple fact was that Barnes could have gotten away from them at any time. He could have slipped off like the HYDRA agent, cutting out at the first distraction when the team was down a few members. Hell, if he was half the agent Natasha was, the man could have slipped away from under lock and key back at Stark Tower, and there would have been little anyone could do to stop him.

Barnes had stopped himself though, had stuck around and offered his advice while they planned. If he was faking it, if he was leading them all into a trap, he was going to a hell of a lot of trouble. More to the point, nothing about his actions or demeanor suggested that he wasn't telling the truth, and Clint had always been a semi-decent judge of character. Natasha thought the same thing, and she'd said as much in a hushed voice, leaning into him while they walked. Even if he wouldn't trust his own instincts, even when he doubted them, he could trust hers implicitly.

Impeccable instincts aside, he was starting to worry about her. Other than the random comment, she'd been quiet, and he could tell that the lack of sleep was catching up with her. She'd even let him put his hand on her lower back as they hiked, let him keep in there where anyone could see it, and though they weren't keeping their relationship secret (not by any stretch of the imagination), she wasn't the type to allow such liberties. He bore his unease in silence, though; he didn't say anything to her because it would just upset her.

He focused on their new surroundings instead. This site was damper than the last, but it was warmer, for which he was grateful. He'd worried about Natasha the last time they slept, the way she shivered against him. And who knew? Maybe this time their luck would hold, and they'd manage to get more than a few hours of shut eye.

Settling in didn't take very long, mostly because they didn't have much in the way of materiel - Clint easily had the most with his pack of rapidly dwindling supplies.

After staking out corners, they congregated, coming together to work up a plan. Once they set themselves to the task, it hadn't taken long to figure something out, to sort themselves into strike teams, to determine the best way to carry out their assault.

No matter how much they planned, no matter how much they tried to prepare for what was to come, they all knew that the assault wasn't the tricky part. It wouldn't be, not with the heavyweights on their team. No, the real trouble would come once they were inside.

Natasha had seen the location of the reactor core on a map when she was inside, so at least they knew their ultimate objective. He knew from experience that she could find the place from memory, but it worried him that they had no idea what numbers they were facing, nor did they know how well trained the HYDRA agents were. If their buddy Franco had been any indication of the norm, however there was more to fear from their numbers than their training.

They would have to deal with all of that on the fly, though. Like Rogers had pointed out, you did your best to come up with a plan, and then you followed it for as long as you could.

When it became clear they were only running in circles around the information they had, Steve had called the discussion quits, and the team spread out in their new surroundings. Thor and Banner wandered off into the jungle in search of food, while Clint foisted the last of the protein bars off on Natasha. She'd taken them without comment, but he could see that she knew what the foil wrapped packages represented.

Across from the two of them, Rogers and Barnes were getting along well. There was an ease between them, a way they acted around each other that spoke to their friendship from long ago, even if everything was twinged with awkwardness. He liked Steve, respected him, and he hoped like hell that Barnes wouldn't let him down. Everything Natasha had told him about the Winter Soldier led him to believe he was an honorable enough guy for an assassin, and Clint was hardly the person to cast aspersions on someone's character for doing that kind of dirty work. So he just watched, keeping one hand next to his sidearm, just in case.

Rogers took off the cuffs when they settled down to rest.

Clint understood why Rogers did it - they were going to need Barnes if they hoped to do what they were planning. If they couldn't trust the guy not to bolt when they were eating dinner and resting, well, then they couldn't trust him in a firefight.

Now, if Barnes would just make good on the trust they were placing in him.

Natasha shifted next to him, scooting closer for warmth and jarring him out of his thoughts. He flung an arm around her shoulders, tucking her into his side. There was a chill in the air, one that had caught them all off guard after the heat. It was verging on cold, but they were too nervous to risk a fire for longer than it took to cook their dinner, and even that they'd only chanced because Stark had started counting off on his fingers all the things they could catch from undercooked meat. Once they'd finished, Rogers kicked ashes over the low flames, and they were left again with nothing more than the dim light of the hand crank lamp from the emergency kit.

He was struck again at how beautiful she was with the dim light casting her features in deep shadows. But then, well, he always thought she looked beautiful; there had never been a time when he thought differently. Maybe it was a little different now, though, maybe there was something special that came with the change in their relationship, their lives.

She was practically fucking glowing, as cliché as it sounded, and he was hit simultaneously by the strong desire for her to be somewhere else, anywhere else, somewhere safe, and an overwhelming feeling of joy at having her there by his side where he could moon over her in close quarters.

"What?" she asked quietly, chewing thoughtfully on the last bite of her dinner, and he hoped he could find something for her to eat that didn't come from the fresh kill everyone else was working on. The warm-blooded lizard thing tasted all right, but he really wasn't sure it was something that Natasha should be eating right now. Natasha herself wasn't particularly keen on the idea either, and she'd gone a little green around the gills when Thor split the beast open to gut it.

"Nothing," he replied, pressing his leg flush against hers and drinking from his canteen. "Just thinking."

"About what?"

He shrugged, handing her the water. "You, I guess."

The corner of her mouth turned up in a smile. "Me?" she fished.

"Yeah, you," he said in a low voice. "Well, you and . . . other things."

"Other things?"

"Oh," he said as nonchalantly as he was able. "Just thinking about what I'm going to do to you when we get some time alone."

She placed her hand on his knee as he continued to eat, and even if was a shitty situation, he decided to be really glad that she was there with him.

They finished their food in companionable silence, sharing the water and keeping an eye on the darkened jungle in front of them. He tried valiantly to keep his thoughts on the task at hand, at completing their assignment, but he continually was drawn back to what they were going to do once they shut down the HYDRA base. What if the planes he'd seen weren't functional? What if they needed fueling up? What if they were coded only to work with a specific group of people, like the SHIELD quinjets. What if . . .

"You're thinking too hard again," Natasha said, nudging him playfully and interrupting his thoughts. "Thought you were supposed to be the brawn in this partnership, Barton. I'm the brains."

"Nah," he said, tightening his arm around her and kissing the top of her head. "You're the brawn, too, babe. I'm just the guy with the arrows."

She smiled at him then, a real smile, full of teeth and happiness, and he suddenly didn't give a shit that they'd crash landed on the bottom of the world and their already bad odds were slowly getting worse. He didn't care that they were stuck here for the foreseeable future. He didn't even care that the rest of the team was in sight.

He pulled her in for a kiss, scorching her mouth with his, running his tongue along the barrier of her lips, tasting her, touching her, and breathing her into his lungs. The world outside the two of them dwindled away, and he let his hand wander to her waist, let his fingers entwine with hers over her belly, and even if it was too early for anything of the sort, he liked to think that he could feel their child moving underneath his palm.

It was kind of perfect.

"Yo, Birdbrain!" Tony said loudly, interrupting them. "I'd tell you to get a room, but seeing as how we don't have one of those, I'm just going to tell you to remove your tongue from her tonsils before everyone else here goes into sugar shock."

Clint rolled his eyes, and Natasha let her head come to rest on his shoulder.

He couldn't wait to get home.

* * *

_Everything was blue._

_The sky, the sun, his skin, his mind – blue. _

_He had been ordered to follow, and he did, relaxing into the freedom of following. There were no decisions here, no choices. There was just blue. _

_He blinked and he was on the Helicarrier, wandering through the sub-levels on his way to carry out the next part of his orders. It was dark, and he was alone. He thought he might feel glad that he was alone, but that thought came from somewhere else, and it itched at him, made him want to claw out of his skin. _

_He heard something, caught a glimpse of red in the corner of his eye. _

_He was not alone. _

_Unlike so many of the others, she fought him tooth and nail, holding nothing back. She matched him blow for blow, grappled with him, and he started to remember something, a thought pawed at the corner of his mind like there was something he'd forgotten . . . _

_And then he felt the orders seep into his skin, felt the need to tear her apart piece by piece and watch her bleed . . . _

He gasped awake, sucking in harsh breaths between gritted teeth. His jaw ached, and he rubbed his eyes to wipe the nightmare out of them.

"Clint?" Natasha murmured from below. She'd been asleep, her head pillowed in his lap and his jacket pulled over her shoulders. He glanced around, checking for signs that he'd wakened any of his other teammates.

Finding none, he said, "It's nothing. Just that dream again."

He felt her fingers clench against the fabric of his pants, and then she shifted, sat up next to him. She leaned in close, wrapped her arm around his neck to pull his face down to her shoulder, and she stroked his cheek while he tried to remember what it felt like when the world wasn't blue.

He sat straight, leaning his head against the wall, still trying to clear his head. He hadn't dreamed that dream in a long time. But it had seemed so real, so close . . .

"He's not here, Clint," Natasha whispered in his ear.

He turned his face toward her. "You sure of that?" he asked quietly, but his voice was rough, rougher than he'd intended. "We don't know that. We never found that out for certain . . ."

She pressed her fingers over his lips. "We do know that. Remember? He's chained in Asgard, locked away."

He huffed out his breath. "Yeah."

The worst part was that he _knew_ she was right. They were both there when it happened, had both heard the reassurances of Odin that Loki was locked away in an impenetrable prison. The grip of his nightmare (was it better termed a flashback? He still didn't know) fading fast, he pushed to his feet.

Natasha started to rise, too, but he put his hand on her shoulder, stopping her.

"Stay here. Sleep," he said. "I'm going to relieve Cap."

He saw her hesitate, saw her debate ignoring him and following him out into the night anyway.

"I just need some air, Nat. I'm fine. You need the rest."

She nodded at last, worry still furrowing her brow, but she lowered herself back down to the ground, pulling his pack underneath her head for a pillow.

Stepping around the sleeping forms of the others, he walked out into the night. Rogers was there, pacing.

"Hey, Rogers," Clint greeted. "Anything interesting happen?"

Steve brightened to see him, then frowned. "You're a little early. Got another hour at least."

He shrugged. "Couldn't sleep."

Steve chuckled. "What? A cave in the middle of the jungle not up to SHIELD field regs?"

He rubbed the back of his neck, falling in step with Rogers. "Believe it or not, I've slept in worse places."

"Oh, I believe it," Rogers said, and the way he said it reminded Clint that Rogers probably had, too, in his day.

"How's Barnes doing with all of this?" Clint asked conversationally.

"He's . . . getting there," Rogers said. "He's still the guy I knew back . . . back home, but there's a darkness there, too. I don't know if that makes sense, but . . ."

"It does," Clint said before Steve could finish. Looking up at the sky, he added, "Nat said the same thing about me once upon a time."

"After the . . ."

"Yeah." Clint cut him off before he could finish his thought.

Steve cleared his throat, and he waited a moment before changing the subject.

"So what's bothering you?"

Clint blinked, surprised for a moment, until he remembered who he was talking to. Of course Rogers would notice that something was up. He bit the inside of his cheek, considering before he spoke.

"Something's not right about all of this," he said.

"You mean other than the whole 'jungle in Antarctica' and 'secret HYDRA base' thing?" Steve asked wryly, and even though Clint knew that he was trying to artificially lighten the mood, he found it working anyway.

"Yeah, besides that," Clint replied with a smile. He stopped pacing then, choosing instead to look out into the jungle. "There's something . . . _more_ going on. I just can't see it."

Steve came to a standstill beside him. "I know what you mean. This has to be more than just some half-cocked super soldier factory. Erskine didn't need nuclear power or diamonds; he used a serum on me."

Clint frowned, thinking. "The Red Skull - you said he was a product of a similar program, right?"

"Yes. An early, mostly failed experiment. Thankfully unrepeatable, just like mine. Or, at least, so I thought," Steve said, obviously thinking about his friend asleep back in the cave. "Why? What are you thinking?"

Clint felt like he couldn't breathe, all the pieces of the puzzle starting to slot into place.

"They're experimenting with nuclear energy. They're working with diamonds."

"Why is that significant?"

"Back in New Mexico, when Selvig was researching the cube, he discovered that the closest Earth-based substance to that of the cube was diamond. Early on, when he was still trying to work out to harness the energy rather than just figure out where the energy was coming from, he tried using diamonds for energy containment. He went through one hell of a lot of the rocks before he changed his tactics."

Steve swallowed, staring at him, obviously ending up at the same hypothesis that Clint had.

"You don't think . . .?"

"I do," Clint smiled grimly. "HYDRA is trying to build another tesseract."

Well, at least he knew why he was dreaming about Loki again.

* * *

Everyone was up and ready to go three hours after Clint woke her with his thrashing.

She was still exhausted, but she felt a little better after the food and the rest, and she was grateful that she'd been able to get some sleep. She didn't remember ever being this tired in her life, but she'd been through a lot lately. She supposed she should be happy that she was able to keep all the food down she'd been given.

Oh, and that she didn't have to eat any of that giant lizard (she'd say _dinosaur,_ but that was impossible) everyone else had polished off when they woke up. She was as adventurous as the next person, but something about the face on that thing had put her off.

"Then why the experiments Natasha saw? What has that to do the tesseract?" Thor was asking, and she tried to pay attention.

That was another thing she kept finding slipping; if she didn't force herself, she found herself drifting off several times a day. Maybe it was just the regular exhaustion that went along with plane crashes and treks through the jungle, but she didn't think so.

Barnes was nodding, seemingly in agreement. "And why send me after Marino? He's not an astrophysicist."

"Given the size of the nuclear plant here, they'd have the energy to run their experiments on four-dimensional space and still have enough left over to blow up half the continent," Banner replied.

Barnes nodded. "So they want him for a different project."

"No sense in building a secret evil clubhouse if you can't invite all the cool kids," Stark said. "HYDRA wants it all – an energy cube, an army of little Super Steve's . . ."

"And they knew if they wanted a shot at accomplishing any of it, they'd have to build far away from civilization," Natasha finished. It was kind of brilliant, really, when she thought of it. What better place to conduct secret experiments than in the middle of a jungle that shouldn't exist?

"We need to move out," Steve said. "We're burning daylight." He frowned over his words. "Starlight. Whatever. Let's get a move on."

Grabbing their packs, they fell in line, following the same order they had before with Steve in the front and her and Clint bringing up the rear. They'd been damn lucky so far, lucky that they'd found a place to plan and rest for a few hours, lucky that they hadn't run out of food and water, lucky that none of the many patrols they'd heard in the dark had stumbled across them while they slept.

She hoped that luck would remain with them for just a little while longer.


	15. Chapter 14

_Thank you so much to everyone who sent me such kind words after my last chapter! I appreciate all of your notes so much!_

_We're almost to the end - just two more chapters and a short epilogue to go! Thanks for sticking with me so far!_

* * *

"So that's it, huh?" Banner asked. He was probably being rhetorical, but that didn't stop Stark.

"I thought it'd be bigger. Maybe have a few smoke stacks or something . . ."

Tony rambled on, and Natasha couldn't help but think that he never gave up an opportunity to hear himself speak. Even here, even now, he just couldn't keep a damn lid on that mouth of his. Dammit, she was going to have flashbacks to when she worked for him . . .

_Stop, Natasha, _she thought forcefully. _Take a deep breath._

She recognized that she was being uncharitable; she'd long since gotten used to Stark's special method of dispelling nerves. She even liked it on occasion, and she found him rather charming in his own special way. In the end, Stark was a good guy. She just wasn't up for the task today, and she glared at the back of his head.

It was better than smacking him. Or worse.

They wore HYDRA uniforms now (well, all of them except for Stark, who'd finished repairs on his Iron Man suit). They'd exchanged their own clothes for those belonging to an unsuspecting patrol that made the mistake of wandering across their path earlier. With a little luck, the uniforms would get them through the first barrier - the high voltage electric fence that surrounded the compound. If no one looked too closely, if they weren't questioned, maybe they could waltz right through the front door.

And if not . . .

Well, if worst came to worst, Stark and Thor were going to fly them over the damn thing. The second option might be the less nerve wracking of their choices (it certainly was more direct), but the team had agreed with her recommendation to stay under the radar for as long as possible. As it stood, they were going to try for the reactor before anyone noticed, try to get in and disable it before anyone noticed. It was a long shot, but they were going to try anyway.

"Follow my lead," Natasha said, stepping out of the jungle and heading down the hill.

_Here goes nothing_, she thought, approaching the gate. She recognized the guard on duty from before; it was the same guy who'd let her pass the first time she'd come here, but he didn't seem to know her face because he waved her in, didn't even glance at the ID badge she flashed.

Idiot.

Not for the first time, she wondered how the organization had survived so long if this was the sort of help they hired.

No one hassled them on the short journey across the yard. No one asked them anything, actually. By the time she waved the access card she'd stolen from the guard in front of the entrance to the building, she was starting to get nervous, but it wasn't until the door slid shut behind them with a strange sense of finality that she realized something was wrong.

Everything was going far too smoothly.

Rogers was the first to voice that fear. "This is too easy."

"Was trying not to say anything, Cap," Clint replied.

They all kept walking forward as if nothing was wrong though, kept moving forward down the hall and toward the junction with the elevators. She could feel the hum of anticipation and nervousness crackle between them, and she wondered if the others felt it too.

Luck was with them, apparently. The general alarm didn't go off until they'd found the elevators.

_Well_, Natasha thought. _At least they let us get inside the building._

"Stark, I think we could use you now," she said into the comms. No longer trusting the elevator, she scanned left and right to find the stairs, but Rogers was already ahead of her.

"Here!" he called, leading the way.

The stairs were steeper than she'd expected, but they took them quickly enough, even if they had to take out two squadrons of HYDRA agents on the way down to the reactor level. Banner hung to the back of the pack, visibly trying not to get upset, and she wondered how much he could stand before the Hulk took over.

She hoped it was a lot - the last thing they needed around a nuclear reactor was an enraged Hulk. Maybe they shouldn't have brought him along at all, except that his technical knowledge was irreplaceable.

They exited the stairwell, racing around the corner toward their destination as one, without needing to talk about it, everyone in tacit synchrony in the thick of it. They were heading toward the last corridor on the way to the reactor, and for one brief moment, Natasha let herself think that they were going to get there with no trouble.

Rounding the corner, she was greeted by the gunfire of what had to be half a battalion of troops, though she couldn't say for sure. She didn't get a good look at them before she was jerked back behind the relative safety of the wall.

"Watch it," Clint said, pressing her against the wall. He raised his eyebrows at her. "Don't suppose there's a secret garbage shoot around here?"

She let out a half-hearted bark of laughter, but her mind was already racing as she ran over the map she'd memorized earlier.

"We could really use your help right about now, Stark!" Rogers called out.

Thor hefted his hammer. "Mjolnir hungers for battle, friends." His hands crackled, blue-white lightning sparking across his fingertips.

"No!" Clint said sharply at him, and he fired off a few rounds blindly around the corner. She heard a satisfying shouts of pain echo amidst the return fire. "Don't do that shit down here! We're in a goddamned nuclear facility!"

Thor looked baffled momentarily, but he stopped doing . . . whatever the hell it was he did when he called lightning. Maybe all the gunfire wasn't especially safe either, but at least she didn't have to worry about what an electrical overload could do in a place like this.

Obviously still game, Thor asked, "Shall I draw their fire?"

Rogers shook his head sharply, obviously weighing their options. "There are too many of them. You'll just end up dead." He turned to Natasha. "You're the one with the mental map – any bright ideas?"

She took stock of the men around her. Clint was still firing intermittently round the corner, and Bruce was breathing deeply, his skin tinged a worrying minty shade. James was pressed up beside her, peering at the clip on his handgun. She knew better than to think that he really needed to check it; he wasn't the sort to forget how many bullets he had left, but she figured he was treating it the same as she did – a way to calm himself down under fire. Under fire they were, and she could hear the troops calling out and advancing toward their position even as bullets pinged off the wall opposite them. It wouldn't be long before they were overrun.

"I thought you said this would be a cake walk, Natalia," James said wryly, raising his eyebrow in a gesture so similar to her own that she wondered if she'd gotten it from him in the first place.

She chambered a round in her Glock.

"This doesn't qualify for you?" she said, making her decision. She nodded at Steve, then took off in the opposite direction of the gunfire. "Come on - this way!"

She led them first back toward the elevators they'd taken down, intending to take them up a level. If they couldn't get to the reactor from this floor, maybe they could go through the ceiling . . .

They were cut off by another group of soldiers as they swarmed out of the cars. Rogers had wasted no time in shouting for them to fall back.

_Shit shit shit_, she thought, but it was as if the thoughts were from another person, as if she was outside of her body and none of this was real. She pushed her way to the front of the group, forced herself back into the lead, feeling the cold rush of adrenaline pound through her body and steer her movements.

If the schematic in her head was right and she was remembering correctly, then the lab she'd seen on the monitors - the one with the machine that melted people - was down here. The damn room _had_ to be around here somewhere; it had to be drawing its energy directly from the reactor core itself. Because of the nature of the experiments, it was likely that the walls were reinforced, and they might be able to withstand an assault, at least until Tony and his heavy artillery showed up. Granted, she wasn't precisely thrilled about backing them into a corner, but it was as good a plan as any.

Well, maybe not good. Better, perhaps.

She loped down the hall, keeping one eye over her shoulder for Clint and the rest following her, and shit, she hoped she was right about this because otherwise she might be about to get everyone killed.

She turned the last corner and came upon a hallway that dead ended in a single door, and she held her breath as she tried it, closing her eyes and hoping that she wasn't wrong about this.

"Ha!" she shouted in triumph when the door swung back, revealing the chamber in question. It might not be the best option, but maybe they could figure out a way to temporarily disable the reactor from here . . .

The HYDRA agents weren't far behind them, and by the time the team had barricaded themselves inside the lab, she'd realized that they were far out manned and out gunned. Banner went to work straightaway, however; he flew to the control panel to see what he could see, but if the expression on his face was anything to go by, she wasn't going to like his answer.

"Can you shut down the core from here?" Thor asked, his mouth in a firm, set line.

"There's nothing . . . I don't think I can . . ." Bruce ran his fingers through his hair, a gesture Natasha recognized as one indicating his rising agitation. The green flush on his cheekbones was deepening.

Well, maybe if they couldn't get out of here in one piece, at least the Hulk could take the place out. That had to count for something.

The footsteps and gunshots grew louder as the HYDRA agents made their way down the hall, and she turned to look over at Clint, who was bending over the console next to Banner.

It was kind of bittersweet, she supposed, but there was no place she would rather be, no place she would rather go out.

She looked back at James, then. "Hey, Barnes?" she said.

"Yeah?" he looked vaguely surprised that she was talking to him.

"Now that you've had a taste of it, what do you think about the old red, white, and blue? Suit you?" she asked, recalling a conversation that seemed a world away, a lifetime ago.

He grinned at her. "You know, I think it might. I . . . "

Whatever else he was going to say was cut off by a loud scraping at the door, a banging that indicated the room was set to be breached any moment. She took cover, then, hunkering down behind the center console next to Clint, leaning in close to him. He reached out as he knelt beside her, taking her hand in his, squeezing gently.

An explosion shook the place, and dust shot forward into the room, coating everything in sight. When no gunshots followed, she peered up over the top edge of the console tentatively.

Stark was there, in all his red and gold suited glory.

"Did you guys miss me?"

* * *

Stark always did like to make an entrance, and the latest was nothing if not that. He'd blazed in, literally at the very less second, and she'd be hard pressed not to look on it as some kind of fucked up _deus ex machina _(except she would never attribute the first part of the expression to Stark. Well, not within earshot, anyway).

When given a chance to breathe and take a longer look at it, James had recognized the device, remembered it from days long ago.

It was, as he'd suspected, a machine designed to create more super soldiers, based on the Russian design that dated to the Cold War era. With that knowledge, Rogers did a quick reevaluation of their goals, and he split them off into three groups – he, Bucky, and Thor would keep HYDRA occupied while Tony and Banner went for the reactor core. She and Clint would stay behind to try to disable the machine in the adjoining room, and if there was a gleam in Rogers' eye that said he knew more than he was telling about her . . . condition, well, at least he was old-fashioned enough not to call her on it.

Natasha shook the thought off; there wasn't time for that kind of thought right now, and besides, what did it matter if he did know? If they made it out of here, they all would know soon enough. She would have to get used to this, one way or the other.

"We should see if we can turn this damn thing off," she said, bending over the control panel. "Disable it, at least." They both knew better than to think that an organization like HYDRA didn't have a backup file off-site with the schematics of the machine, but maybe they could set them back a bit.

Clint nodded, leaning in beside her to help look for a way to power the thing down for good.

"You okay?" he asked, scrolling through a readout. She knew better than to think he wasn't watching her in his peripheral vision.

She spared him a glance. "I'm fine," she said. And she was. She was breathing, uninjured, and relatively chipper considering the situation. "Better once we get the hell out of here. What do you got?"

"Not seeing anything," he said, carefully, taking her cue to change the subject. "Someone's got to go inside that thing, lay in some charges, and rig it to blow when we've reached a safe distance."

She turned and took a step toward the door without bothering to agree verbally. She'd always been the one to do that sort of thing; she was smaller, more familiar with the tech, and when push came to shove, she was better up close and personal. Clint caught her arm, though, pulled her back.

"No," he said firmly.

She started to bristle, felt her hackles rise, but then he added, "No undue risks, remember?"

Nuclear powered machines that melted people certainly counted as that.

She took a breath and nodded.

"I'll keep an eye on you out here." She handed him the small supply of explosives she had strapped to her belt.

He squeezed her arm in thanks and headed into the room, going straight for the machine.

Clint was still in there, laying charges when Steve crashed through the wall, shattering the control panel when he landed.

* * *

The confusion over the comms had been bad enough before, but it had increased in the past few minutes, culminating in the explosion that rocked him on his usually sure feet.

"What the fuck was that?" he asked, already heading for the door to make sure that Natasha was okay in the control room. He depressed the handle, but nothing happened. He tried again, thumping against the door when it didn't budge.

Rogers' answer was tinny through the mike. "Just a minor mishap with a few HYDRA agents. They won't be bothering us again."

"You okay in there, Clint?" Natasha asked.

"I'd be better if I could get out of here," he said, standing back and walking over to the viewing window. The control room was in ruin, sparks flying from where Rogers had clearly crashed into it, but Natasha was up and walking, at least. That was something.

"We're at the reactor," Stark said. "We're going to try to shut it down."

"Do it," Rogers said, touching his ear.

And that was the moment that the klaxon started sounding in the room. The chatter over the comms continued through the noise.

"Hey, guys, not to be a pain in the ass, but do you think one of you could get the door locks to disengage?" he asked, trying not to panic. "I don't like the sound of that alarm."

He ran through his recent actions, trying to figure out if he'd done something to set off the alarm, but he hadn't so much as touched anything, which probably meant that Rogers' hard landing had set it off. That didn't bode well for his chances.

Clint looked around him, trying to find an access panel, some way he could bypass the locking mechanism. His mind raced with the rush of adrenaline, taking stock of the assets at hand. There had to be something.

"Fuck," Natasha said, obviously just as disturbed by the noise as he was. Maybe even more, since she was the one who'd seen what this place could do. He'd only had her descriptions to go by, and it was more than enough to shake him. "Stark, Clint's in the test chamber, and we can't get the door open!"

Clint dropped to his knees by the door. Maybe he could access the mechanism directly, pry the lock open . . .

"Stark!" Natasha repeated, her voice shrill with fear. "What's going on at the reactor?"

"We can't shut it down!" Stark said over the comms, panic leeching into his voice. "I can't go into the reactor either, not like this. My suit is too damaged. Someone please tell me they've got another idea!"

Natasha started trying to run Stark through another plan, walk him through the steps she would take to assess the problem at hand, but it was all background noise to Clint, things he didn't need to think about just then. It sounded like he only had one shot left.

He smiled literally at the pun.

One shot indeed.

"Rogers."

Clint's voice came out steady, for which he was glad. He felt pretty calm, actually. Maybe it was the rapid succession of near death experiences he'd gone through in the past hour. Maybe it was the lack of food and rest. Whatever it was, he placidly reached back to his quiver, thumbing the code for the arrow he wanted.

"What?" Rogers shouted, now beating at the glass with his fists in frustration.

"Look out for her, okay?" Clint nocked the sonic arrow, aiming it for the glass. "Oh, and duck."

He released.

* * *

The force of the explosion threw her to the ground, but she was up again in moments despite the ringing in her ears.

_Oh please let that have worked. Pleasepleaseplease . . ._

The glass was still intact.

She ran to it, looked inside, only to find Clint slumped on the ground. She couldn't tell if he had just been knocked unconscious or if . . .

She was not going to think about the other thing.

"Clint!" she screamed, beating at the glass. It was pointless, but she didn't know what else to do. She knew what would happen next, knew what was going to happen to anything still in there when the machine turned on fully.

Rogers pulled her away from the window, held her struggling against his chest.

"No!" she said, clawing at the steel of his arm. "Let go of me! Clint is still in there!"

"I know," Rogers said, but it wasn't registering. She couldn't hear anything over the din of her heart racing in her ears. There was wetness on her cheeks now, and she knew she was sobbing, knew she was losing herself, but she couldn't stop it because he was still alive, he was still breathing, he _had_ to be and she had to save him, had to do something because she loved him and she couldn't do this without him and _fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck. _

It was Bruce's voice that cut through the madness.

"I'll do it."

"Do what?" Rogers asked.

The only reply was Stark's, "Bruce, no!"


	16. Chapter 15

_Just one chapter and an epilogue to go! Thank you to everyone who's stuck around this long! _

* * *

When he woke up, the world was ringing in his ears. He felt dizzy, like he was drunk or hungover. Maybe both. He rolled to his feet, wobbling and pitching forward precariously.

Leaning heavily on the wall beside him for balance, he shook his head. That fucking arrow of Stark's sure as hell packed a punch.

He felt arms go around his waist, and he went immediately into defensive mode, grabbing the person's wrists, throwing them against the wall and holding them there. He was halfway to going for his knife when he recognized that it was Natasha.

"Nat," he said, but he couldn't hear anything over the ringing, couldn't even figure out if he'd really said her name at all. He released her wrists, his hands coming down to cup her face, grasping onto her because nothing else was making a lot of sense at the moment.

She was beaming at him though, and he could see tear tracks running through the dirt on her face, and he knew then that he'd survived only by the skin of his teeth. He wondered what they'd done to turn the machine off. He hadn't managed to breach containment of the room, that was for certain, and the glass window was still intact.

She was saying something as she looked up to him, but he couldn't hear her voice. And now that he thought about it, his head really fucking hurt.

"Clint?' she asked, worried when he didn't respond to her question, and the only reason he could even tell that much was because of the way her forehead crinkled, the way concern was so clearly emblazoned on her features.

He took a deep breath, fighting the wave of nausea that washed over him. The dizziness had increased, too, and he thought he might pass out. Latching on to Natasha's shoulders, he tried to quell that urge. They were in the heart of enemy territory; he needed to be awake, he needed to be in fighting shape, he needed to . . .

"I can't hear anything," he tried to say, and then he slumped to the ground.

* * *

They rendezvoused at the airstrip ten minutes later, though it seemed like an eternity to Natasha. They were under fire the entire time, and she'd emptied her clips, gone through her spares and Clint's, and now she was down to her last few bullets. She was uncomfortably low on ammo, and it didn't help that Clint was pretty out of it, that he was barely on his feet and walking, leaning heavily on Rogers as they fell back.

They ran in to Stark and Thor on the tarmac, the latter of the two holding Banner's prone form in his arms.

"Where's Bucky?" Steve asked. "I thought he was with you." He threw his shield, taking out three goons in one go. Natasha shot the fourth, dropping him moments after his comrades fell.

"We thought he was with you!" Stark said, using his thrusters as energy weapons. He must have been low on ammunition too, possibly even out; she'd never known him to rely on thrusters when he had another choice.

They were all in dire straits, it seemed, and to make matters worse, James, no, the _Winter Soldier_ had apparently bugged out on them, too.

Well, she could hardly blame him for wanting to get the hell away from them.

They retreated back amongst the planes, still hoping to make minimum distance before keying in the sequence to blow the charges that would collapse the lower levels of the building. With luck, that would be enough to stop operations down until SHIELD could get here to clean up the rest of the mess.

She was hunkering underneath one of the Blackbirds, using a fuel car for cover (one that she really, really hoped was empty), when the boarding ramp lowered behind her.

She looked up.

"Heard you were looking for a ride out of this dump," James said, standing at the top of the ramp. When she didn't reply, he added, "Well, come on, Romanoff, I don't have all day!"

Grinning widely with relief, she ran up the stairs. She knew these planes like the back of her hand, had trained on them extensively in her early days with SHIELD. They had better birds in the sky now, of course, but there would always be a special place in her heart for the old SR-71.

Three nervous-looking men stared at her when she boarded. She recognized the man in the front – Marino.

James put a hand on her shoulder to keep her moving. "I found these guys on my way out. Figured they could use a lift."

She moved through the plane toward the cockpit. Swinging into the gunner's seat, she laid down a suppression fire while the rest of her team boarded, and when Rogers gave the all clear, she raised the ramp, sealing them up inside.

Feeling someone hanging over her shoulder, she craned her neck to see James entering the cockpit and taking the seat next to her.

"Think you can help me fly one of these things?" she asked him.

"I'm sure I'll figure it out."

As it turned out, Barnes had nearly clocked as many hours in one of these things as she had, and once they were airborne, she'd had very little to do other than key in the sequence that triggered the explosives they'd left behind as a little present for HYDRA. She didn't particularly like the idea that innocent civilians could be down there, that she was dooming them to the same fate as their captors, but then, it wasn't her fault that they were in harm's way. James had saved the people he could. There was still a chance, however slim, that SHIELD would find the others unharmed when they moved in.

She'd keep telling herself that until she believed it.

"You should go back there," James said after a while, motioning toward the rear of the plane with his head. "I know you're dying to see how he's doing."

She almost denied it out of force of habit, almost asked him what he meant, but she was tired and hungry and really wanted to do just what he'd suggested, so she thanked him instead, undoing the straps that held her into the seat and making her way to the rear of the plane.

Clint smiled haggardly at her when she sat in the empty seat beside him.

"Glad you're okay," he murmured.

"You, too," she said. Even if he couldn't hear anything, he obviously knew what she'd said because his grin had grown as he shut his eyes.

"For certain definitions of okay, I guess," he said, and then he closed his eyes, closing her out. Maybe it would have stung more had he not looked so tired. They'd find time to talk when they got back to New York, she knew, and he'd be okay until then. She kissed him lightly on the forehead and stood up, looking over to where Banner was stretched on the floor with Tony hunkered over him.

"Hey," she said, resting her hand briefly on Stark's shoulder. "What happened?"

Stark looked up at her, his eyes suspiciously red-rimmed. "He ran into the reactor room to shut it down."

She frowned. Surely the Hulk could withstand a little radiation exposure . . .?

Tony shook his head at her confusion, obviously having picked up on what she was thinking. "He didn't Hulk out. He went in there as Bruce."

Fuck.

Little things, clues about what had happened back at the HYDRA base started to slide into place then, and events started to make more sense. She remembered the shouting over the comms, remembered that Bruce's voice had been calm amidst all of that, but she'd had more important things on her mind at the time. All she'd known until now was that Clint was alive and Bruce had done something stupid to make sure he stayed that way. She was grateful for his sacrifice, of course she was, but what price had Bruce paid?

"How's he doing?" she asked quietly.

Tony dropped his head down to his hands. "It should have been me in there."

"Stop that," she said, because even if she understood his reaction, this was no time for it, not with Bruce laying on the ground between them. "Banner knew what he was doing."

"I'm the one with the suit. I'm the one who should have . . ."

"Hey, doesn't the dead guy get any say in this?" Banner said weakly from his position on the floor.

She looked down at him. He really didn't look good; Bruce was wan on a good day, but this was a step beyond even that. She wasn't totally sure, but she thought she also detected a hint of green in there, too. She wondered what the hell that meant.

"I'm sorry," Tony said. "I shouldn't have let you . . ."

"You didn't _let me_, Stark. I made a decision," Banner pointed out. He coughed, and Natasha saw a dot of blood appear in the corner of his mouth. He swiped at the corner of his mouth, wincing at the sight of his blood, but he carried on anyway. "Besides, that suit of yours wouldn't have been able to stop the radiation, not in the state it's in."

"You don't know that . . ." Tony started to say, but Bruce interrupted again.

"Yeah, I do know that," he said. Bruce rolled to his side then, cringing. "I've been helping with those repairs, remember? Besides, I've survived high doses of radiation before . . ." Whatever else Bruce was going to say was swallowed in another bout of coughing, his shoulder heaving as he hacked.

"Not this kind," Natasha said, fear twisting her guts. "Not like this."

Bruce looked up at her. "I had the best shot," he said.

His gaze dropped to her waist then, and suddenly she understood why he'd done what he'd done. Why he'd run headlong into the reactor core, why he'd done it as Banner and not Hulk. Why he couldn't risk being the Hulk when he turned it off, why he had to make sure that it powered down without exploding.

She was sure, and then Bruce confirmed it.

"Kid needs a father," he said, and then he rolled onto his back., his face contorting with pain. She pulled Tony back as Bruce's body rippled, shifted, changed and grew, getting him out of the way before he was crushed by the Hulk.

She braced herself for the worst, for the loss of control and rage that accompanied Bruce's change.

It didn't happen.

The Hulk just lay there in the same position as Bruce had been, prone and quiet in the back of the jet. It was disconcerting.

Tony blinked down at Bruce. "That was unexpected," he said. He frowned then and turned to look at Natasha. "What'd he mean about a kid needing its father?"

She resisted the urge to roll her eyes. This wasn't exactly the place for that kind of announcement, but, well, they were all alive, more or less, and well, maybe they could all use some good news.

"I'm pregnant," she said simply.

"Huh," Tony said, for once not having a whole lot to say. He just looked thoughtful for a long moment, then took a seat next to the Hulk, strapping himself in for the ride.

Steve and Thor smiled at her tiredly, but didn't have much to say either, and it was an odd sensation, dropping that bombshell with almost no reaction. She wondered what she'd expected, exactly. Shouted congratulations? Denials? Half-crazed declarations of love from a jealous Steve?

She snorted at herself, grabbing one of the protein bars Thor was working through on her way back to the cockpit.

_Hey, nice,_ she thought, unwrapping the unlabeled bar and taking a small bite. _Chocolate strawberry._

Their lives had never been easy, but she was going to do her best to take the good when it came.

* * *

The Hulk still hadn't reverted back to Bruce by the time they landed on the Helicarrier, and it had taken a forklift and two full teams of agents to move the Hulk's mass from the carrier deck down to medical. He was breathing, though, and Natasha had other things to worry about, so she chose to take that as a good sign. As long as he was alive, as long as the Hulk still breathed, there was still hope for Bruce.

The others were taken into separate observation rooms when they got to medical. Rather, they tried to put them all in separate rooms, but Rogers had been just as unwilling to leave his old friend alone with SHIELD as Natasha had been unwilling to leave Clint's side. She'd ended up sitting in the same room as Clint while they waited on a doctor.

It was Hank Pym who came to see them at last, a face they at least knew in passing from when they'd been dosed with the fertility drug all those months ago. SHIELD had hired him on after his research grant with Stark Industries had run out, and while she'd missed seeing his face around on the rare occasion that she'd stepped into the research laboratories, it was clear that the change of venue was doing Dr. Pym good. In between his examination, he caught them up on his research, something about a revolutionary particle that he was developing, though she honestly wouldn't be able to tell anyone about the so-called "Pym particles" if pressed.

Dr. Pym asked a few questions while he poked and prodded at Clint, setting up an appointment for a CT scan and some other tests after they'd had a chance to shake off the fatigue of the mission, but he hadn't been able to offer anything conclusive about whether or not Clint would regain his hearing. Apparently, that sort of thing could only be dealt with on a case by case basis, and they just didn't know enough about Clint's condition yet to give a better diagnosis. Clint had shaken off the request to stick around for more testing today, but he'd nodded when Pym had written a request for him to return as soon as possible.

When it came to be her turn, she'd hesitated at Pym's questions, unsure how much she wanted to share with someone who was now working entirely for SHIELD.

He won her over though, when he pointed out that he swept for bugs in here himself, and that whatever she had to say to him would remain between the three of them in that room. He'd never breathed a word of what had happened to her and Clint before (no, that had all gotten out thanks to Stark), so she decided to trust him.

He'd smiled genuinely at her news, congratulating her, and she realized that no one had said that to her yet, that Pym was the first to offer her his best wishes for the baby.

She shocked herself to realize that she was thinking about the thing growing inside of her as a baby now, not some hypothetical, and she shocked herself further to realize how much the child had already wormed its way into her heart.

His smile never dying away, Pym broke her out of her soft thoughts by ordering a sonogram, reassuring her that he wanted to check on the health of the fetus, wanted to make sure that everything was okay after her ordeal. If it weren't so awkward, she would have thanked him for not laying into her about going off on a mission while knowingly pregnant.

Clint held her hand when she laid back, and he didn't complain when she squeezed sharply at the sudden coolness of the gel on her belly. She wasn't even really showing yet, her stomach barely curved, and it looked more like she'd eaten a good meal than she was going to be a mother in a few months.

She was caught up in the strangeness of the moment when the air was pierced with a strange, fluttering, racing noise, one that she'd never heard before, and when she asked, she couldn't believe that it was coming from the thing growing inside of her, the baby.

She turned to Clint, wanting to share the wonder, but she'd forgotten that he couldn't hear, that circumstance had taken this moment away from him. She couldn't bear to take that away from him, didn't want to tell him what she was listening to, not here at least when they were at least nominally in public, so she clasped the choked, bittersweet feeling down, and just stared at the black and white image of their baby with him, squeezing his hand and holding back her tears as best she could.

Clint wasn't able to. The biggest grin she'd ever seen stretched the edges of his face as he looked back and forth between her and the monitor, and goddamn, she loved this man.

Pym printed out a screenshot of the baby, promising to email them another copy, and then he put the wand back, handing her a wad of tissues to clean herself up. He excused himself, reiterating their promise to come back for more tests.

Clint was on her the very moment that she tossed the tissues in the garbage can, picking her up off her feet and twirling her in his arms like she was some princess in a damn fairy tale.

They weren't perfect, not like the princes and princesses in fairy tales. They were both getting older, and they bore the scars of their age, both mental and physical. But when he set her back down on her feet and pressed his lips sweetly against hers, when he put both hands on her belly and looked at her in such perfect wonder, she kind of felt like she was that princess.

Christ, she was cheesy when she was pregnant.

No, they weren't perfect, but the thing they had between them was the perfect thing for them, and she was going to bask in it with him, was going to seize that feeling with everything she had, and she was never going to let go.


	17. Chapter 16

_Last chapter, folks - just an epilogue left to go after this! I had hoped to get around to posting that today, but it looks like that will have to wait for later in the week. After this, look for a third installment in the series (soonish, but not immediately - I've got a couple other things to post first!)_

_Thanks go out to everyone who stuck with me this far! _

* * *

They took a taxi back to the tower after the examination. They both had a battery of tests to sit through come morning, but right now they needed to be home, needed to be quiet together, needed to sleep in their own bed. She could see the fatigue heavy in Clint's shoulders, and she knew him well enough to recognize that the fatigue was as much physical exhaustion as it was worry about his hearing.

She clutched his hand in the back of the taxi, clung to him for the short ride home, trying to ease some of that ache inside him. She hoped it was enough.

She was curiously _not_ tired, and it was as if all the stress of the mission had lifted away when she first heard the sound of her child's heartbeat reverberating through the tiny examination room.

She felt exhilarated, maybe, keyed up and relaxed all at once, like she'd finished a mission and she'd won, but the adrenaline was still there. Like all of that, but . . . not.

The whole situation was strange.

It was hard to categorize the odd giddiness that had arisen at the confirmation that there was something growing inside of her, that somewhere underneath her heart there was a child that was a part of her, a part of Clint. She got the impression that even if she were good at articulating her emotions, she would find it difficult to put that feeling into words. It hadn't seemed real before, not truly, not even when she couldn't keep food down or when she found herself winded after a couple mile hike through easy terrain.

Now, though, _now_ it felt real and she had proof, actual proof that they'd done something good together, really good, pure and perfect and everything they weren't, and she felt like her heart was going to burst. She'd never thought she had the capacity to feel this way, and it took her a good twenty minutes of watching Clint stare at the blurry black and white photograph of their child for her to figure it out.

Maybe, she thought, this was what _happy_ felt like.

She could get used to this.

When they pulled up in front of the tower, she let Clint help her out of the car even though she didn't really need it (because maybe, she thought, he needed it, needed to be useful when he must be feeling the opposite). He threw his arm around her shoulder as they entered the building, and they found their way inside with the quiet folding around them, cocooning them in a kind of fugue state. She recognized that the world was moving around them, that people were living out their lives in the bustle of the city outside, but none of that mattered.

He kept his hands on her the whole way up, pulling her in close and kissing the crown of her head in the elevator. The gesture was nice, soft in a way they weren't. Maybe they could be, though, maybe they could learn to be that way for the little boy or girl inside of her, and maybe this was just a part of that change. She surprised herself by welcoming the change, by actually _wanting _it, and she just hoped that she could live up to the task.

She looked at Clint as he led the way out of the elevator, tugging gently on her hand. Not for the first time, she sized him up, took in the way he moved, the way she could make out the outlines of muscle beneath his clothes. She took in the way his shoulders sagged, the way his head fell ever so slightly forward, how he held his face expressionless as he activated the lights and toed off his shoes by the door.

She followed suit, then turned to head down the hall.

"I'm going to take a shower . . ." she said over her shoulder, expecting him to follow. He didn't, though, he didn't even move.

Something snapped inside of her when she realized that he hadn't heard her, that he didn't know what she'd said because he had his back to her, because his focus was elsewhere. Maybe it was the hormones coursing through her body or maybe she was getting dumber with age, but where once she would have shrugged it off and let him fend for himself, let him go to ground alone and wallow in self pity until he worked it out for himself, she couldn't this time, not now, not ever again.

She reached out, put her hand on his shoulder, and when he turned, she carefully, slowly enunciated, "Shower?"

He stared at her lips, the wheels spinning in his head, and she saw him hesitate, saw him think about saying no, about running off to sulk. Then he closed his eyes briefly, nodded.

The silence was eerie, though not so much for the fact of it but because Clint had always hated silence, and he'd always yammered on, filling the emptiness with inanities. Even when they were decompressing after a mission, even when they were dead tired after the mission high faded, even then, Clint had something to say.

He didn't this time, and it hurt. What hurt more was the way he was avoiding her eyes, how he was hardly even looking at her.

She pulled him into the stall behind her.

The water was hot, blissfully steaming out the grime of the past several days, sluicing down over their bodies and rinsing everything away in a swirl down the drain. Slowly, very slowly, too slowly, she watched him change under the water, watched him stand a little straighter, watched him let go, if just a little.

Breathing easier, she leaned against him under the spray of the water, content to press her body against his and feel him next to her, strong and soothing and fucking hell, _alive_.

At the last thought, at the idea of what had nearly happened to him, she sniffled, a tear dangerously close to the surface. She'd thought that she was used to it, that she was used to the constant skirting of doom, and that she'd long since resigned herself to the idea that one or both of them might not come back from a mission. Yet, there had been an entirely too _real_ tinge to their lives lately, ever since Asgard, ever since she'd admitted that she loved him, and _fuck_ she couldn't lose him.

She pressed her lips to his shoulder, shaking against him, and if a few tears slipped out the edges of her eyes, well, who could tell amidst the rest of the water? She lolled against him, clung to him, wanted to climb inside him and hide, but since none of that was possible, she let him tilt her head back instead, let him lather up her hair and bathe her.

It wasn't something she ever would have considered before him; she couldn't imagine letting someone else get this close to her, do something so intimate for her, but she equally couldn't imagine him not doing this.

He rinsed the suds carefully from her hair, grabbing for the soap and wash cloth, and then he was running his hands all over her body, cleaning her, touching her, warming her flesh. He paused at all his favorite spots, paying careful attention to the hollow of her throat, her breasts, her thighs, the slight convex roundness of her belly. He kissed her sweetly when he washed between her legs, and she felt her breath quicken despite herself, despite her exhaustion.

She must have jolted when he touched her because he backed her against the cool tile, held his body against hers, and then the terrycloth was gone, replaced with nothing more than his fingers, which were stroking her, dipping into her, making her forget that she knew how to stand on two legs.

She grasped his shoulders, crying out wordlessly when he rubbed at her clit, the rough pads of his fingertips driving her relentlessly toward ecstasy. She clutched at him, turned her face into his neck, sucking on his skin and tasting him.

His hand moved quicker then, and he began to buck against her, grinding his hardening cock against her hip, and something about the action, about the desperation, maybe, made her lose the last vestige of her cool, made her abandon any pretense that she wasn't going to fly apart at the seams from nothing more than the feel of his hand in her pussy and his cock against her skin. She bit down on the curve of his neck when she came, pulsing and rocking, her limbs trembling all the while stars exploded behind her eyes.

He was there, calmly regarding her when she returned to reality, still aroused by his closeness, still ready for him, needing him, wanting him. She'd rarely felt anything approaching this, this . . . _yearning_ that overtook her senses, and she wondered what the Room would think of her now, what they would make of all their training, all their brainwashing coming to naught.

Emotion bloomed inside her chest, almost crushing her, but the delight that flowed up through her was too much to contain and she grinned at him, stretching the sides of her face until she thought she would tear.

"Bed," she said carefully, and she was glad he understood her because she needed him, then and there and now, and if she didn't have him inside of her in the next sixty seconds she thought she would lose her mind.

He smacked off the shower a little too harshly, but this was Stark tech, so it would survive a little maltreatment. Maybe they were both feeling impatient though, because instead of reaching for a towel, he nudged her forward, directing her toward the bedroom. She went without argument, and they left a trail of water behind them as they went.

If she'd ever entertained the thought of playing coy, she abandoned the idea immediately when he crawled into bed beside her, when he ran one palm down the length of her body. He parted her legs gingerly, almost reverently, and she wasn't sure what this mood was, but fuck, it kind of hurt her, twisted her up and made her ill, if in the best possible way.

He slid into her in a single, smooth thrust, stretching her open and filling her, completing her. And shit, yes, they needed to talk, they needed to figure out what the two of them were going to do once . . . well, once there were no longer just two of them. They needed to figure out what they were going to do about his hearing, they needed to figure out what they would say to the others, they needed to figure out any number of things.

But he was rocking into her, kissing her, touching her, melding with her, and she couldn't care less about any of that because he was here, in her arms and alive and wonderful and everything she'd ever needed.

She breathed him in as they moved.

* * *

The first thing he noticed when he woke up was the heat of the sun on his face and the way it contrasted with the decidedly more pleasant warmth of Natasha draped over him. He turned to her with a smile on his face, not wanting to wake her, but wanting to watch her just the same. She was beautiful, perfect, and he still couldn't believe that she was pregnant, that he was going to be a father, she a mother, and just _fuck_.

The ringing in his head had faded to nothing more than background noise, so quiet and unassuming that he didn't even remember at first that he'd lost his hearing.

And then Natasha scrunched her face up, looking perturbed, and her lips moved.

It was a punch to the gut that he couldn't understand what she'd said.

She twisted away from him, gesturing rudely into the air before slumping back into a pile beside him. It wasn't until he glanced at the clock that he realized what had happened – their regular alarm, the one they'd set with JARVIS ages ago when they started cohabiting had gone off. It was a loud, annoying, the radio set to the station they hated with most, the DJs forcing them to wakefulness out of sheer anger in under two minutes.

And he hadn't heard it.

He sighed into the air, and it must have been pretty noticeable because Natasha squeezed him across the waist. She touched his chin to get his attention, and even if it took her a few tries, he eventually realized that she was telling him that she was hungry.

He felt his stomach rumble in response, and the smile that spread across her face was sunshine.

They pulled on clothing, lazily slipping into t-shirts and drawstring pants, and when they shuffled out to the kitchen, he sat her down, firmly shaking his head when she tried to help him put something together. He couldn't hear anything, but he could still manage breakfast.

He handed her a glass of orange juice while he cooked, remembering a day not too dissimilar to this one when he'd bought a dozen kinds of juice for her to try, when he'd bent over backwards to please her and he'd hardly even known more about her than her name and her zeal for knocking people out in the sparring ring.

He made her pancakes, the buckwheat kind, and he fried them in too much oil, getting the edges crispy the way she liked and handing them to her one at a time to eat hot and steaming. She grinned as she chewed, eschewing forks and knives and even plates in her quest to sate her hunger, and he fucking loved her so damn much.

He wondered if other, regular guys who found themselves in his situation felt this way, if they ever felt simultaneously terrified and awestruck and humbled and completely desperately in love with the entire fucking world all because of a microscopic fleck of life maturing inside of their partner.

Shit, the feeling was good enough that he didn't even really mind that he couldn't hear a damned thing. Tony would figure something out. He always did.

Well, usually.

He shrugged the maudlin thoughts aside because he needed to relax, needed to connect with Natasha in a way that didn't involve five other men and a trip to the bottom of the world. He hadn't seen her, hadn't been with her for far too long, not like this, and it was starting to drive him a bit off the deep end.

He couldn't stop staring at her while he ate, chewing as he looked her over, meeting her eyes and smiling shyly at her, like they had a secret and he supposed they did, after a fashion, even if he was pretty sure he had caught the others looking at him like they knew.

She stood up after she ate, holding her hand out to him, waiting until he took her hand to pull him to his feet.

She smiled at him, the sweet smile she used when no one else was around, the one she'd only ever aimed at him, the one he could see a thousand times and never get enough of. She leaned up on her toes to kiss him, placing her lips so very chastely against his, barely more than touching, and the gesture was intimate enough to steal his breath.

He held her like that, his fingers ghosting along her sides as they swayed in their kitchen, and it was simple and good and perfect, everything he didn't deserve but so desperately craved, and he was grateful to whatever trick of fate brought her his way so long ago. If he never got his hearing back, if the damage was permanent, that would be okay, because at the end of the day, he had her and they had _this_ and it was enough.

It was a far cry from yesterday, before they'd gotten cleaned up, when he'd been wallowing in self-pity.

She pulled away from him ruefully, reaching behind him to grab her phone, and he busied himself by cleaning up while she talked.

She touched him on the shoulder afterward, showed him the call log.

Fury.

Yeah, they needed to get checked out. He sighed.

* * *

They headed back across the city because there wasn't a better option with Banner out of commission. There were only a handful of people that Clint would trust to look him over, and for the moment, every one of them was at SHIELD headquarters.

They stopped in to check on Bruce first, to see if there had been any change in his condition, but he was still unconscious and stuck in Hulk form. He really didn't look good, pale and not at all like the Hulk he knew. Shit, his skin wasn't even the right color.

Well, the right color for the Hulk.

He wished that there was something he could do, some way he could make a difference here. The fact of the matter was that this new, gray Hulk was there because of him, because he'd been stupid enough to get himself stuck in a damn testing chamber. Bruce should be safe, should be up and working, doing whatever the hell it was he did when he wasn't busting heads. Instead, the scientist was here, down for the count and it was all because of _him_.

Natasha told him everything she'd learned afterward, typing out the words on her phone while they waited for Pym to show up for a more thorough prenatal checkup.

Apparently, she said, Bruce might look terrible, might not have stirred once since they'd carted him into the facility, but Pym had said there was more going on underneath the surface. Bruce's body was healing itself, it was rewiring itself after the massive dose of radiation. Pym thought the color change had a lot to do with that, that his skin had changed in reaction to the radiation.

Clint hoped it was true, but all they could do was wait.

Pym came into the observation room shortly after, running Natasha through a standard series of tests (and a few non-standard ones, just to be sure), but in the end, everything came up normal. Natasha was fine, the baby was fine, they were fine.

He let out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding.

It was his turn then, and Pym poked and prodded at him for what seemed like hours, peering into his ears as he tried to figure out more about the problem. Nothing came up, or at least, nothing was readily apparent, so Pym ordered a CT scan.

Clint fucking hated CT scans. Especially now that he'd spent far too much time in a similar room.

Repressing a shudder, he went along with the test, striping down to his underwear and holding still when they put him into the machine. He hadn't protested when Pym asked if he'd eaten recently, when he warned Clint that the test might make him nauseated. Clint did feel ill afterward, regretting the small meal he'd had that morning, but at least it was over with.

Over with, but not done. Both of his eardrums had ruptured, which wasn't surprising, but it didn't appear that there was any more serious, lasting damage. There certainly wasn't enough visible damage to cause total hearing loss.

They would have to wait more, have to wait and see what happened because, Pym told them, sometimes there was nothing anybody could do. Clint hated it. He would prefer even bad news to no news at all, but there wasn't anything he could do to change that.

So even if there was no good answer for him, at least Natasha was there, waiting for him when he got out of the radiation chamber, and she handed him his jeans while he got dressed. There was nothing he could do about so many things – nothing he could do about Bruce, nothing he could do about his ears, nothing he could do about HYDRA or fucked up medical experiments – but there were plenty of things he could do for her, for their baby.

Her hand was on the door handle, ready to step out of the room when he had that thought, but he stopped her, pulled her to him, and kissed the breath out of them both.

It was enough.


	18. Epilogue

_Here it is - the last part! Thanks to everyone who stuck with me through this thing, especially when you guys were so nice and patient with my constantly interrupted posting schedule. Love you all so much! _

_Special thanks to eiluned on this part for reading through this for me and telling me to just post the stupid thing already. _

_Look for the third (and final) part of this story in about a month. Oh, and if you follow me on tumblr (I'm sidhera there, btw), I'm posting a MasterPost later today with a fan mix for this series. _

_Thanks for reading!_

* * *

Two days passed, then three, and before he knew it, a week had gone by.

If life hadn't precisely returned to what he would call the status quo, it was certainly approaching whatever passed for normal in a place inhabited by a god, a couple of super geniuses, and no less than two bonafide super soldiers.

And that wasn't even counting Barnes, who'd been staying in one of the guest rooms since they'd gotten back.

Clint hadn't been seeing much of the others, though; he and Natasha been sticking to themselves, holing up on their floor and only venturing out the once when they'd run out of yogurt (Nat had never been picky before, but apparently the baby needed the blueberry kind, not any of the six other flavors they had in the fridge).

The two of them settled into a pattern, at last, and both of them were adjusting to his . . . condition, both of them were figuring out how they fit together when everything seemed a little bit crooked.

When he'd first realized the extent of his injuries, he'd been worried that he'd be useless, that he wouldn't be able to navigate the complexities of his life. Over the course of the week, though, he'd discovered that he'd been wrong, completely, utterly wrong, starting with the notion that the damage to his eardrums would affect his aim.

It hadn't.

On Wednesday, he'd woken up early and slipped out of bed without waking Natasha. He'd taken his bow to their practice room, and if he'd hesitated slightly as he raised and aimed his weapon, he'd been the only one there to see it. Half a dozen bullseyes later, he'd started to believe that he'd be okay.

Natasha had shown up behind him sometime during his second set, and when he'd put his bow down on the table, he'd ended up filling the void between his palms with her, and he'd strained his knee a little when they'd fucked on the cool concrete floor.

His intact shooting abilities proved, the rest of his life had begun to slot back into place, too. When they had first gotten back, he'd worried about Natasha, worried about how he was going to communicate when he missed out on half the conversation. She'd dispelled the notion, though, had shown him that nothing had changed between them with the little gestures and codes that they'd developed over the years - the half shrugs and the winks, the raised eyebrows and the slight touches. He'd realized that the two of them had never really needed the words anyway.

Hell, he was even starting to get used to the quiet.

It had been a good week, capped off by an even better morning because instead of heading to the gym for some quality time with the treadmill like she usually did, Natasha had climbed into his lap, crowding his space, and reminding him of all the things he loved about her.

She tasted like cranberry juice and cinnamon toast, and he wanted to drown in her.

He kissed her more deeply, pulled her against him and stroked his tongue over her lips until she parted them, and then he was tasting her fully. She moaned against his mouth, and he felt the rumble ripple over into him as she twined her arms around his neck.

The bedroom was a thousand miles away, and he was struck with the sudden urge to taste her, to run his tongue all over her body and memorize the texture of her skin, so he picked her up, grabbing her underneath the curve of her ass. She went eagerly, wrapping her legs around his waist and clinging to him, kissing down the side of his face, along his jawline, down his neck as he walked them over to the couch.

Whereas once he might have just dropped her, let her bounce on the cushions as she grinned playfully, he was a little afraid of that now, worried about what it might do to their baby.

Not for the first time (and probably not for the last, either), he grinned stupidly at the thought - _their baby_.

He put her down carefully, dropping to his knees in the process. He pressed her back against the soft cushions, running his hands up and down her arms, over her throat, down her sternum. She maintained eye contact with him, speaking all the words he needed to hear through her gaze, telling him all the things he needed to hear.

He tugged at the waistband of her pants, his pants, actually, he noticed now, his shirt, too, and the sight of her wrapped up in his clothing hit him straight in the groin. He felt all the blood in his body rush there, felt himself stiffen, and he needed to be inside her.

First, though, he needed to act on his earlier urge, the stronger one, that one that told him he needed to see her skin and taste her, so he helped her shimmy out of her pants, gratified to see that she'd forgone panties and that she was already shining and wet.

He growled as he buried himself between her legs, going straight in for her pussy, not bothering to tease or wait or try to draw this out because she was just as ready for him as he was for her and it had already been too long since he'd had the chance to do this. He'd always loved the taste of her, loved that she let him do this when she'd never let another person, loved how it made him feel special and proud and unworthy, and he did his best to respond to the subtle clues that she gave off, the little ticks of her muscles that told him what she wanted.

He was pretty sure he was doing a good job from the way she was fisting her hands in his too long hair, the way she was tugging on the tufts as he ran his tongue around her clit, as he sucked on her and gently, very gently scraped his teeth along her sensitive flesh. Her legs tightened around his neck, and he was instantly transported back to the first time he'd done this for her, when he'd peeled off her leather uniform in a shitty hotel halfway around the world, ostensibly to look after the nasty gash on her arm, but ending up buried between her legs as she shook apart against his face. Back then, he'd had a flash of panic when her thighs clenched; she was the Black Widow, after all, and maybe she wouldn't eat him afterward, but he'd never heard of anyone surviving her bed.

He'd come to discover the reason for that was because she didn't take very many people into it, too caught up in the heady emotion of personal agency, and he was gratified and strangely honored more and more every time he realized that she thought he was one of her best decisions, that letting him inside of her, telling him her secrets with a hushed voice in the dark was the inevitable outcome of the arrow he'd put through her when he'd caught up to her.

He'd fallen in love with her then, he was pretty sure, had fallen in love with the flash of anger and resentment in her eyes as she fought to pull the arrow out of her shoulder. He'd fallen in love with the way she lashed out at him when he tried to help her, at the way she'd thought he was lying to her when he said that he wanted her to come work for SHIELD. He'd been a goner, even then, even before he really knew anything about her other than her name and her kill count, and he'd fallen a little more for her with each passing day.

He pressed his hands low on her belly, gently holding the flesh there as she writhed, and he couldn't stop touching her, didn't want to stop, never wanted to. One of his hands inched upward then, snaking under the thin fabric of her t-shirt, and he massaged her breasts, passing his hand between them, plucking at her nipples and fucking her with his mouth until she at long last stiffened, paused, her breath stopping for a long moment and her back arching. She came with a shout, crying out as her muscles spasmed and a new flood of liquid spread across his face, and he fucking loved that he could do this to her.

He'd been so caught up in her orgasm that he didn't even realize at first that he'd heard her shout, a muffled noise, like she was under a mound of blankets.

But he'd heard it.

He surged upward then, pulling her off the couch entirely, down onto the floor and into his lap, kissing her in his unmitigated joy, and if she was languid at first, still relaxed from her orgasm, she started panting again when he thrust up against her, pressing his cock against the apex of her thighs.

He pulled back from her mouth, brushing the hair out of her face and smiling so hard he thought he would burst.

She smiled back at him, mouthed the word, "What?"

"I heard you shout," he said, and it was still strange to talk and not to hear himself say the words, but shit, _he'd heard her shout_.

Her grin grew wider then, and she collapsed against him, molding herself to him and kissing him soundly. He wondered what he could do to get her to shout again, to get her to come so hard that she couldn't be bothered to reign herself in.

She pressed him backward onto the carpet, and maybe this wasn't the best place to go about this because he was old and still a little sore from his injuries, but he'd worry about that later because right now Natasha was peeling her shirt off over her head, revealing the rosy tips of her breasts and he kind of wanted to see them bounce as he fucked her.

Priorities.

He reached up, cupping her breasts in his hands, watching the red flush spread down her neck and chest as he caressed her.

God, she was beautiful.

Beautiful enough that he couldn't help but lean up to capture her breast in his mouth, drawing her nipple between his teeth as she rocked back and forth in his lap.

She was busy, too, taking her own pleasure at being with him, and even if he couldn't understand the appeal of his broken form, particularly in light of the other people she was around day in and day out, he knew that she found whatever it was she was looking for in him, knew that she liked his arms and his abdomen, liked running her hands over his shoulders, that she grew wetter and started to pant when she flexed her palms on his chest.

He released her tit when she grabbed the hem of his shirt, pulling it off over his head and tossing it aside carelessly in her quest to bare him, and he didn't waste time in going in for her other nipple, sucking and biting and making her squirm as she ran her hands over his shoulders, scratching him lightly with her nails.

She grew restless against him, pushing away and grabbing for the waistband of his pants, and he knew that look, knew what it meant when her eyes darkened like that and she started to grow frantic. This would be over quickly, too soon but not soon enough, and she was going to be the death of him.

She didn't even bother to pull his pants all the way off, just shoved them down around his knees as he fell backward, and then she braced a hand on his chest, straddling him, and using her other hand to guide him to her opening. He had to force himself to keep his eyes open as she slowly, deliberately, gradually slid down onto him, her movements deceptively calm and calculated even though he knew she was falling apart inside.

He didn't know where to look, didn't know what he wanted to see most because she was blushing all over and her head was thrown back in pleasure, but fuck, couldn't get enough of watching her impale herself on his cock, loved watching her take him in even as she stretched to accommodate his size.

She stilled when she came to rest on top of him, drawing both hands to his waist and dropping her head forward, and he could see her pant, see her shoulders quake as she tried to catch her breath.

Really, he felt the same way.

She was warm and wet and tight around his cock, and he could feel delicate ripples as she clenched around him, squeezing him inside of her like she wanted to hold him there forever. He fought to gain control over himself, fought to keep his based urges in check because he wanted to brace his feet on the floor and pound up into her, he wanted to fuck her raw, until she made that delightful noise again, the loud, unencumbered shout of release. He bit the inside of his cheek, hard enough that the metallic taste of blood filled his mouth, and she must have seen him struggled because she leaned forward (and _fuck, _that position was doing great things to his cock) and touched his face.

She said something, and it was a good thing that he knew her so well because he kind of sucked at lip reading.

_I won't break._

It was all in her eyes, that look that told him that she didn't want to be coddled, the one that reminded him that she was pregnant, not dying, the one that reminded him that she was still her and nothing would change that. It was the look that reminded him that they fit together so well partially because they seemed to synch up in bed just as much as they ever did in the field, and it was the look that reminded him that she liked being ridden rough as much as he did. Something inside of him snapped apart at that, shattered into a thousand pieces, and he bucked up into her, grabbing the tops of her thighs in an effort to push more deeply inside of her.

She thrust right back against him, circling her thighs to increase the friction, and he thought he might explode, overloaded on sex and that indefinable quality that made up _Natasha. _He rput his feet flat on the floor then, tried to set a driving rhythm, but he couldn't gain purchase on the carpet, and his feet kept slipping out from under him.

She rolled them, going down on her side and using the strength of her legs to take him with her, and he loved her a little more that she accomplished the task without his cock falling out of her. He thrust mercilessly into her, jamming himself inside of her wetness again and again, fucking her, loving her, needing her, wanting her, craving her like a drug.

"I need you," he said suddenly, unsure how loud he was, suddenly uncomfortable inside the new skin he found himself in. He couldn't tell if he'd even said it aloud, so he repeated himself, rolled her further underneath him and held her face between his palms. "I just need you."

She turned her face up, frowning she whispered something up at him. He couldn't hear it, which by all rights should hurt, but the look there was so raw, so open, so unencumbered by anything but burning need that it was like seeing a piece of her soul. Stunned by the weight of it, he dropped his forehead against hers, breathing her in as he slowed his thrusts, and she draped her leg around his back in response, holding him down against her, hugging him against the length of her body.

The new pace they set was slower, more methodical, but it was relentless, and it wasn't long before she was shaking, biting down onto his lip and clasping him more tightly between her thighs. As perfect as it was, it wasn't quite enough, wasn't right, and he needed to hear her, needed it more badly than he'd ever needed anything, except he didn't know how to articulate that, didn't know if he could.

Seemingly knowing what he needed, she dropped her head down into the cradle of his palm, and as she came, she cried out, shouting her release. It would have been enough for him, either the sensation of her orgasm or the sound of her voice, but together, the combined force of both pulverized him, turned him to rubble and dust above her as he came.

He felt her laughing, her chest shaking with mirth against his side, and when he looked at her, he saw pure joy spread across her features, coloring every aspect of her and making her more beautiful than he thought possible.

Smiling, she said, _I love you_.

He kissed her.


End file.
